“Nothing has been done (in the capital market in Slovakia) for 30 years”

“Nothing has been done (in the capital market in Slovakia) for 30 years”. Such a bold statement was also made at the National Bank of Slovakia conference on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the capital market in Slovakia, and at which I had the opportunity to speak on one of the panels. Unfortunately, we did not quite get to the justification stage in the debate. And as it happens with big announcements, this second phase is usually more difficult. So I have not been in the capital market for 30 years, but I can think of many significant capital market “improvements” in the last 10 years or so. I will highlight just two (they are close to us now): ✅ For example, the AIFM Directive in Slovakia now allows us to buy shares in the Luxembourg HB Reavis fund and sell them tax-free. If this directive had not been adopted, we might not have had this possibility; ✅ The regulation for so-called ELTIF funds (after its recently amended wording is already latently being eyed by some Slovak financial players) creates fundraising potential for local small and medium sized companies and at the same time allows retail clients to invest also in local companies in an organised way and thus without having to buy “dubious bills/bonds”; As I said at the conference, the rule making of the capital market game falls significantly within the EU’s remit. And that includes some DLT areas interfering with the capital market. (IMHO not leaving the EU may well be seen as a success for the Slovak capital market, given current electoral preferences). At the same time, if the EU, with “100 times” capacity compared to SK, has no ambition to finally address the tokenization phenomenon legislatively in DLT financial instruments, it is not reasonable to expect SK to unilaterally come up with innovative (and also functional) solutions (e.g. in the area of securities law). This is even if we were not living in the current political agony. Peter Jedinak, whose opinion in this area is without any doubt preceded by knowledge, said at the conference: “I do think it is improving year by year and that is from a legal point of view, the quality of regulation, the quality of documentation…” So all the best to the Slovak capital market and let’s move on 😊 P.S. a few quick wins of realistic (taking into account also the normative competence of the SK authorities) improvements from our practice in the comments (didn’t fit in the status)