A consultation has been launched on the transparency regime for equity, exchange traded funds (ETFs) and other related instruments in the markets in financial instruments regulation (MiFIR) by the the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA).

Banks in the EU will be subject to the most demanding stress tests to date to see how they would stand up to very low interest rates, growing trade tensions and a disorderly departure from the union by the UK. 

An upward spike in the pound, which happened just seconds before the Bank of England (BoE) announced UK interest rates as unchanged, is being investigated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) at the central bank’s request. 

Six eurozone banks were found to have inadequate levels of capital by the European Central Bank (ECB), which told them to remedy the situation.

The People’s Bank of China (PBoC) reduced repo rates by 10 basis points on February 3 and separately deployed around RMB1.2tn ($173bn) into reverse bond purchases as the country returned to work after the Chinese New Year holidays. 

Most of the variability in risk-weighted assets can be attributed to fundamentals, the European Banking Authority (EBA) said in two reports on the consistency of RWAs across EU institutions authorised to use internal approaches for the calculation of capital requirements. 

Rapidly evolving trends such as digital assets and robo-advisers are emerging as key challenges to regulators, said Robert Jackson, a commissioner at the Securities and Exchange Commision (SEC).

US financial institutions have been warned of an increased risk of cyber attacks by US federal regulators who are calling on firms to increase their cyber security controls.