France

France produces draft law on financial security

Arnauld Achard, Marie-Aurore Burel, Helen McCorry and Gaël d’Almeida. Clifford Chance, Paris

A draft law that aims to improve the transparency and security of savings has been completed and was submitted on 20 December 2002 to the Conseil d’Etat for review and comment, and should be presented to the Conseil des ministres during February 2003. In order to reduce the complexity of the procedures in relation to the financial authorities, it has been decided to merge the Conseil des Marchés Financiers (the CMF), which authorizes the activities of Investment Service Providers, and the Commission des Opérations de Bourse (the COB), which ensures that the information disseminated by public companies is accurate and which regulates the market, with the Conseil de discipline de la gestion financière , which controls UCITS, to form the Autorité des Marchés Financiers (the AMF). Thus, the activities of the AMF (which consist of approving, supervising, regulating and sanctioning the members of the market) will have a broad scope and will be similar to those of the COB and the CMF.