(Finance) – Nel 2025 there CONSOB will continue activities to strengthen data-driven and risk-based supervision to stem phenomena that require increasingly sophisticated contrast interventions. This can be read in the explanatory programmatic report of the budget forecast for the financial year 2025, where it is explained that the economic situation that characterizes the financial markets and the constant evolution of the supranational and domestic regulatory panorama require the development of an “innovative supervisory approach, proactive and data-driven”.
The initiatives aimed at tackle greenwashing in the design and distribution of financial products and instruments, for example apply machine learning techniques for the identification of market manipulations, to develop the research project with the Polytechnic of Turin and the University of Marche to combat online abusive practices as well as to use algorithms for the reading and analysis of financial statement data and of non-financial declarations (NFS).
CONSOB considers it a priority to modernize IT infrastructures and strengthen cyber-security: for this purpose, the implementation of a multi-year cloud migration program was decided, which began with membership of the National Strategic Hub and the first migration of the “CONSOB Portal”, which will be followed by the migrations of the other software applications. Furthermore, the strengthening of disaster recovery and cyber-security measuresalso in light of the continuation of geopolitical instability, which has caused a significant increase in malicious activity on the internet.
The new organizational structure of CONSOB, which became operational from 1 October 2024, will allow the Authority to address the challenges underlying the need to promote the competitiveness of the capital market, also through regulatory simplificationaimed at reducing the costs associated with accessing and remaining on the price list. The national legislation will be adapted to the changes contained in the regulatory acts that make up the Listing Act and the systematic review of regulatory acts and guidelines of competence will be carried out, in light of the Capital Law. It will continue to be the effectiveness of the regulatory changes regarding prospectuses was monitored and of the new listing regime of the Italian Stock Exchange, which came into force on 3 October 2022, both from the point of view of reducing costs for issuers and investigation times, and from that of investor protection.
Among other things, the possible development of the debt market through issuances will be monitored tokenafter the entry into force of MiCAR CONSOB will analyze the impacts of the legislation on the regulatory and supervisory structure and on the financial industry, as well as being involved in the development of a new supervisory model for portal managers and a SupTech information analysis modelin light of European legislation on crowdfunding.
Dialogue with stakeholders will be further strengthened, including through the renewal of the institutional portal. They will also be promoted financial education initiativesrenewed in content and methods. In particular, CONSOB will increase financial education initiatives aimed at teachers, in line with the inclusion of financial education in school programming envisaged by the Capital Law.
Over the next three years, CONSOB will be engaged in “intense regulatory activity” for the adaptation of the secondary legislation to the provisions contained in the Capital Law and in the TUF reform decree, we read in the document. With particular regard to the works connected to the Capital Law, in 2025 the regulatory provisions for the implementation of the regulatory delegation regarding the list of the board of directorsan ad hoc regulation on commitments must be provided for in the sanctioning regulation and the Issuers Regulation (Regulation no. 11971/1999) must be aligned with the changes introduced regarding widespread issuers and internal dealing.
As regards the forthcoming adoption by the Government of the legislative decree reforming the TUF, although it is not currently possible to determine exactly the extent of the regulatory delegations that will be granted to CONSOB, the exercise of these delegations will entail the necessary revision of all the implementing regulations of the TUF to take into account, among other things, the repeal of certain existing regulatory delegations to CONSOB and the new regulatory powers to CONSOB resulting from the reform process.
In addition to the aforementioned interventions, which “will require a considerable use of human resources“, the Institute will also have to adapt the secondary legislation under its competence to various European regulatory acts, including: the Listing Act, the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), the European regulation on crypto-assets (MiCA), the DORA Regulation, the MiFID II/MiFIR framework (as recently amended).