Over the past year, competition authorities globally have continued to make a move towards more stringent merger control enforcement. This follows an increasingly shared view among authorities and politicians across multiple jurisdictions that excessive consolidation in certain industries has been exacerbated in the past by a lenient approach to merger control enforcement.

IOSCO has released its Final Report on Investor Education regarding crypto-assets, highlighting the risks of investing in volatile crypto-assets, particularly due to low barriers to entry, social media influence, and fraud.

The FCA has expressly acknowledged the overlap between the FCA’s existing MiFID II-derived rules on the manufacture of investment products in its Product Intervention and Product Governance Sourcebook (PROD) and the new Consumer Duty provisions on manufacturer product governance arrangements.

The South African Reserve Bank (SARB) has released the following important updates and recommendations impacting the financial markets

The South African Revenue Service (SARS) reviewed its VAT registration process in May this year, following an unusual increase in the number of VAT registrations and a significant spike in suspicious registrations. With immediate effect, SARS implemented changes to the VAT registration process in order to scrutinise new VAT registration applications more stringently.