The European Commission wants stricter requirements to apply to the board of asset managers and parties that provide investment advisory services 

The European Commission wants stricter requirements to apply to the board of asset managers and parties that provide investment advisory services. This appears from the recently published draft MiFID 2.

It is the view of Francine Schlingmann, Mariken van Loopik and Kees Saarloos of the Investment Management Group of De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek that the proposal includes that the board should have sufficient collective knowledge, skills, and experience. The "management body", which includes the supervisory directors, should make sufficient time available to exercise its tasks and have sufficient resources available for training.  

On 20 October Francine Schlingmann commented in Fondsnieuws on the same issue.

The European Commission wants to prohibit kickbacks - the fees paid by funds to banks and asset managers for selling their products - in situations involving asset management and independent advice. But the Commission would continue to allow kickbacks for non-independent advice and execution-only services. This is reflected in the draft MiFID II presented by the European Commission.

Practice will have to show which parties will project themselves as independent and which ones as non-independent, says lawyer Francine Schlingmann of the Investment Management Group at De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek.

The current directive does contain a number of criteria for independent advisers. They have to provide a sufficiently large and diversified range of products. And these have to be products from a sufficient number of different providers, not only be the adviser's own products or those of affiliated companies, says Schlingmann.

Detailed rules on how independent advisers should organise their processes to ensure their independence and other technical requirements will follow

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