Alix Prentice, Assia Damianova and Nick Shiren
Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft LLP
June 2012
On 24 March 2012, the European Parliament’s Regulation on “short selling and certain aspects of credit default swaps” (the Regulation)1 came into force. The Regulation:
creates a two-tier disclosure requirement for ‘significant’ net short positions in shares and disclosure obligations for net short positions in EU sovereign debt and uncovered positions in credit default swaps that relate to European sovereign debt issuers (Sovereign CDS);
imposes a locate requirement, which essentially prohibits uncovered short sales;
exempts Sovereign CDS from some of its provisions when that Sovereign CDS demonstrably hedges counterparty or systemic risk; and
allows national regulators to suspend restrictions on the short selling of sovereign debt in times of liquidity stress.
