Our Corporate Governance and Financial Reporting Expert Groups have contributed to our response to ESMA's Consultation Paper on the Regulatory Technical Standards on the European Single Electronic Format (ESEF).
Overall, we did not support the introduction of a mandatory structured electronic reporting for companies as it will add additional costs fort companies without a significant added benefit for both investors and companies. We noted that the level of investor demand for such a reporting format was unclear.
Due to the lack of comprehensive cost benefit analysis carried out for this policy proposal, we noted that ESMA should recommend that the ESEF that should be required is the publication of the Annual Financial Report (AFR) as a portable document format (pdf).
