European Securities and Markets Authority publishes annual MiFID II MiFIR equity transparency calculations effective 7 April 2025

The European Securities and Markets Authority has published the results of its annual transparency calculations for equity and equity-like instruments, setting the liquidity status and related metrics that will determine applicable MiFID II/MiFIR transparency and tick-size requirements from 7 April 2025. The publication covers liquidity assessments, the identification of the most relevant market in terms of liquidity, average daily turnover used to determine pre-trade and post-trade large in scale thresholds, average transaction values used to set standard market size, and average daily numbers of transactions used for the tick-size regime. ESMA’s results indicate 1,283 liquid shares and 1,003 liquid equity-like instruments other than shares, and are based on 2024 data submitted to the Financial Instruments Transparency System (FITRS) by trading venues and approved publication arrangements. The full list is available via FITRS XML files and the Register web interface, and ESMA encouraged market participants to monitor daily releases for estimated calculations for newly traded instruments and the four-week calculations that apply after the first six weeks of trading. ESMA indicated that the transparency requirements based on the annual calculations published from 1 March 2025 will apply from 7 April 2025 until 5 April 2026, and that the next annual calculations, to be published by 1 March 2026, will become applicable from 6 April 2027.