(Adds more detail)
By Huw Jones
LONDON, Sept 17 (Reuters) - The European Commission will
propose easing listing rules for small companies and create a
widely available record of share prices to help deepen the
bloc's capital market, a document showed on Thursday.
The EU executive will commit to 16 "actions" in total to
complete a Capital Markets Union or CMU over the next two years
and help the bloc's economy recover from the coronavirus
pandemic, the document seen by Reuters showed.
"The Commission will start work on the actions announced in
this action plan by launching public consultations on the legal
framework for European long-term investment funds and non-bank
insolvency shortly," the document said.
"The CMU cannot be built in a single stroke."
The first CMU action plan was launched five years ago but
progress has been patchy and a deeper market has become all the
more urgent given the need to recapitalise companies hit by the
pandemic, and the departure of Britain, the bloc's biggest
capital market, from the EU.
The EU is currently assessing how much access it will give
to the City of London financial centre in future.
"A CMU is a precondition for a stronger international role
of the euro and Europe’s open strategic autonomy," the document
said.
The 16 actions also include setting up an EU-wide platform
to give investors financial information on companies, and
assessing if banks that turn down a loan request from small
companies should direct them to providers of alternative
funding.
The Commission will also propose a common EU-wide system for
withholding tax relief at source on cross-border investments,
the document showed. It will also seek to harmonise non-bank
insolvency law.
The EU executive will also propose the creation of a
post-trade consolidated tape of volume and prices data for
equity and equity-like financial instruments to help investors
find the best deals, the document said.
"It would also improve competition between trading venues,"
it said.
(Reporting by Huw Jones; Editing by Hugh Lawson and Emelia
Sithole-Matarise)
