Revocation of retained EU law Transitional amendments Amendments to the Markets in Financial Instruments Regulation (MiFIR) and the European Market Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR) 8. Simplifying the transparency regime for fixed income and derivatives
The MiFID II framework includes several requirements for trading venues and systematic internalisers to provide information about pricing and volume before a trade would be completed (this is known as pre-trade transparency) and publicly disclose certain details about executed trades (this is known as post-trade transparency). These requirements apply to bonds, structured finance products, emission allowances and derivatives. An EU-wide transparency regime for fixed income and derivatives markets was only introduced in 2018 and was modelled on the transparency regime for equity markets that existed pre-2018.
	Although it was amended to accommodate for the specific characteristics of non-equity markets, the way that it is calibrated does not go far enough in accounting for fundamental differences between equity and fixed income and derivatives markets, and the different instruments that make up the latter. This has resulted in a number of bespoke illiquid instruments (where transparency does not always aid price formation and is therefore unnecessarily burdensome) falling within scope of the regime, while some liquid and standardised contracts (where more transparency would aid price formation) are not subject to transparency requirements.
	The current regime also includes a number of exemptions from post-trade transparency requirements which have made the regime overly complex and costly and resulted in it being difficult for the market to view actual traded prices.
	The Act aims to reduce the complexity of the current regime and ensure that the right instruments fall within scope by delegating responsibility for calibrating the scope and firm-facing transparency requirements to the FCA.
	To achieve this, the Act removes the current regime which is set out in primary legislation and gives the FCA new rule-making powers to:
develop a qualitative and quantitative assessment to ensure that the right instruments are in scope of the pre- and post-trade fixed income and derivatives transparency regimes;
specify the circumstances where pre-trade transparency requirements should apply, and what those requirements are; and
develop a post-trade transparency regime.