Newsletter Feb 2007: Majority of EU states miss first MiFID deadline

Barely a third of the countries in the EU appear to have met the January 31, 2007, deadline to set up a regulatory framework for the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID), the sweeping new law aimed at creating a single financial services market across much of Europe. Officials at the European Commission in Brussels say it is too soon to identify how many countries transposed the huge and controversial directive in to national regulations by the deadline, but industry estimates range between three and ten. Several more countries are expected to complete transposition by the early summer.