Esma report on retail products: interesting, but inaccurate

This wide-ranging document (over 100 pages long) makes for interesting reading, not only as a summary of the European investment landscape, but also to get some insight into the thinking of the European regulators. The first comment that could be made is one of timeliness. The EU’s political and regulatory machinery is known to be methodical rather than nimble – but to take over 15 months to compile and publish an annual report seems excessive and particularly unfortunate this year