The Financial Services and Markets Authority has chaired the first meeting of the supervisory college for Eonia. This college brings together the supervisors of all banks taking part in Eonia, as well as the supervisors of states for which Eonia is of systemic importance.
In response to the alleged manipulation of financial benchmarks several years ago, a European regulation[1] imposes strict controls on the organisation and management of benchmark calculations. Notably, it sets out that the provision of benchmarks of critical importance can only be carried out by entities (called administrators) that have obtained authorisation in the Member State where they are located. A benchmark is deemed to be critical if it is used as a reference for financial instruments or financial contracts, or for measuring the performance of an investment fund with a total value of at least 500 billion euros.
In accordance with the European regulation, the FSMA is the supervisory authority of the European Money Markets Institute (EMMI), the Brussels-based entity that manages the Eonia and Euribor benchmarks.
It is in this capacity that the FSMA established the Euribor college in September 2016. Now that the European Commission has added Eonia to the list of critical benchmarks[2], a college has been established for this benchmark as well. The two colleges have been merged to create a single Euribor/Eonia college.
In addition to ESMA and the FSMA, the college currently consists of 17 national supervisory authorities.
[1] Regulation (EU) 2016/1011 of 8 June 2016.
[2] Commission implementing Regulation (EU) 2017/1147 of 28 June 2017.