On January 30, the European Securities and Markets Association (ESMA) published the second update to its questions and answers on the implementation of the Short Selling Regulation (the SSR).  The Q&A document addressed questions posed by the general public, market participants and competent authorities with the aim of ensuring that competent supervisory authorities adopt common supervisory approaches and practices in the application of the European short selling regulatory regime.  The Q&A document has been updated in respect of ESMA’s guidance on:

• Question 1 – The scope of the SSR.
• Question 3 – Calculating the net short position.
• Question 4 – Duration adjustment for calculating net short positions in sovereign debt.
• Question 5 – Net short positions when different entities in a group have long or short positions or for fund management activities.
• Question 7 – Uncovered short sales.

In addition ESMA has added a new question 8 on uncovered sovereign credit default swaps.