Equivalence
For BMR references please see Article 30.
A number of countries are seeking to go down the equivalence route, however it’s a tight timeframe to get this in place before the 1st January 2020 when the BMR transition ends.
Legislation that needs to be enacted takes time and once in place the third country benchmark administrator needs to be registered and supervised in the third country before the European Commission will undertake the examination procedure. Information sharing needs to be set up between the regulator in the third country and ESMA.
In some cases a third country regulator may impose additional conditions on the benchmark administrator prior to providing its authorisation under the new legislative regime.
Furthermore, some legislation being introduced in third countries may only apply to certain benchmarks, leaving other benchmarks to seek alternate routes if they wish to become equivalent i.e. recognition or endorsement.