Fish Pool ASA is licensed by the Norwegian Ministry of Finance. All regulatory information and documentation regarding Compliance and be found here.
Regulations
The financial market has experienced several new regulations the recent years. From January 3rd 2018 MiFID II was included in the laws and regulations in EU and EEA. The content in the below text has been emailed to Fish Pool members directly during winter 2017/2018 and provides a brief introduction to MiFID II.
Note: The content of this text is not considered legal advice and is intended only as information from Fish Pool.
Do not hesitate to contact Fish Pool if you have any questions regarding the regulations.
All Fish Pool Trade Members must:
- Present a LEI number (Legal Entity Identifier: a unique, global company identification number) for the company with a membership with Fish Pool. These are also needed for bank transactions like currency trading etc.
Fish Pool needs these to identify the companies in the authority reports. From 2018, no companies can place orders, enter trades or hold positions unless Fish Pool holds this identification.
- Send Fish Pool personal identification codes for Responsible persons and all other traders. Fish Pool needs these to identify the traders in the authority reports.
From 2018, no traders can place orders or enter trades unless Fish Pool holds this identification.
Hedge or speculation
As of January 3rd 2018 Fish Pool must report all positions entered by trade members to the government.
In the future, Team Fish Pool will always ask the purpose of an order or trade you place with Fish Pool. The purpose can be Hedge (risk reducing) or Speculation.
Annual notification to Competent Authorities
The new regulation puts limits to the companies trading financial products, such as Fish Pools financial salmon contracts. All companies trading the products must either:
- Be licenced as a financial company or
- Notify the Competent Authority in your home country annually that your trading in financial salmon contracts is something you do in addition to your company’s main business (the financial contracts are ancillary activity) before April 1 each year.
Regarding bullet number 2 above: Ancillary activity is activity other than the core activity in the company. For practical purposes, companies in the value chain of salmon, farmers, exporters, importers, VAP and HoReCa normally use Fish Pool contracts as ancillary activity.
You must send the notification to the Competent Authority in your company’s home country. The different Competent Authorities may request the notification in a specific way.
Competent Authority may request a calculation of your Fish Pool contracts being ancillary. In such a case, Fish Pool will do our best to help you. Do not hesitate to contact us if you want more detailed information on this regard.
Notification deadline: 31 March every year.
Position limits
The Financial Supervisory Authority of Norway has set limits to the number of open positions a company and a group of companies can hold in Fish Pool contracts. One limit is set for spot month contracts (the contract next to expiry) and one limit is set at the net position across all other contract months.
Salmon companies that use financial contracts as hedging of physical production may apply for exemptions from the position limits to the Financial Supervisory Authority of Norway. When an exemption is granted, all positions marked as hedging (see topic above) will be removed from the calculated position and only speculative positions will be included in position limit.
Fish Pool report positions for all trade members daily. The Financial Supervisory Authority of Norway aggregate positions in a group and all companies in the group must comply individually and collectively. Each position holder (i.e. every member of Fish Pool) must apply for exemptions. This also applies in cases where it is the group’s aggregated position, not the position of each member, which is high.
The Financial Supervisory Authority of Norway has made the form “Commodity Position Limits Exemption application” available at this webpage https://www.finanstilsynet.no/tema/mifid-ii–mifir/varederivater-i-mifidii-forskriften/ for companies that will apply for the exemption.
Transparency Act
The Norwegian Act on Business Transparency and Work with Fundamental Human Rights and Decent Working Conditions (the “Transparency Act“) (Norw.: Åpenhetsloven) entered into force on 1 July 2022. The main purpose of the Transparency Act is to foster a higher level of transparency regarding the production of goods and the provision of services, especially relating to how businesses respect fundamental human rights and decent working conditions as part of these processes.
Fish Pool ASA is subject to the Transparency Act cf. section 2 and 3 of the Transparency Act. On this background, Fish Pool shall have in place sufficient routines and mechanisms to assess, map, follow up possible breaches on fundamental human rights and/or decent working conditions down the supply chain.
This statement is an account of these first due diligence assessments performed by Fish Pool.
Pre and post trade transparency
Salmonprice.com
Real time information regarding orders and trades are available free of charge and accessible to the public at www.Salmonprice.com – Fish Pools trading system. If you do not have access to Salmonprice.com, please register and receive log on details immediately here.
More information and user guide available here.
For the time being, Fish Pool does not charge fees for real time access to market data and does thus not obtain any revenue from making market data available (0 % of total revenue). For changes in this, please follow our fee list. If Fish Pool choose to charge a fee for market data, Fish Pool will notice the market with a minimum of 30 days’ notice period. If you want access to our FTP – feed service for accessing data electronically, please send an email to post@fishpool.eu.
Block Trades
The following products are eligible for being traded as Block Trades:
• Products listed as standards on www.salmonprice.com
• At least one of the counterparties to the transaction must be a Non-Financial Counterpart
• The transaction has to be a Hedge for the Non-Financial Counterpart
• The lot size must be at least 50 tons/month
• Both Counterparts in the Trade must be Fish Pool Trade Member and the Block Trade must be executed according to the Fish Pool Rulebook, and Fish Pool will report the Trade to Clearing and make it transparent on www.salmonprice.com.
• Fish Pool has an obligation to monitor Block Trades on possible violations to the Rulebook
Quality of execution of transactions
Fish Pool will make tables and documentation regarding Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2017/575 available to those with an interest. Please contact us at post(a)fishpool.eu.
Benchmark regulation
As of December 18th 2020 Fish Pool is an administrator within the Regulation (EU) 2016/1011 on indices used as benchmarks in financial instruments and financial contracts (called BMR). Rulebook app 2 “Calculation of Fish Pool Index and Monthly Settlement Price” is thus updated.
For more information, please follow this link for Key elements in our BMR methodology and this link for our complete BMR Methodology. The policy for changing or stopping an index is found here.
Fish Pool has engaged Kontali Analyse as external auditor of the Fish Pool Index, FPI, and the Monthly Settlement Price, MSP. Kontali Analyse evaluates the methodology used and whether the indices are a good reflection of the spot prices for salmon. They also evaluate procedures for change, complaints, communication with price suppliers and possible conflicts of interest. The annual audit report will be published within the end of March each year.
Nasdaq Copenhagen is the administrator of the Nasdaq Salmon Index. Follow this link for more information and access to documentation. Below are some of the most relevant documents:
- Nasdaq Salmon Index Robustness Assessment 2022-2023
- Nasdaq Salmon Index Audit Report 2021
- Nasdaq Salmon Index Robustness Assessment 2020-2021
Complaints handling
Complaints handling is governed in Appendix 2 of the Fish Pool Rulebook. FPI and MSP shall be reliable indices with high trust in the salmon market and beyond. Fish Pool has several levels of escalation to handle complaints, the first of which is contacting Fish Pool directly at +47 55 70 67 00 or post@fishpool.eu. All registered Trade Members and companies participating in price reporting used when calculating FPI and MSP can initiate a complaint to the ISB. Here is a link to contact info.
Ancillary activity
The EU directive 2014/65/EU of 15 May 2014 on markets in financial instruments, called MiFID II, was implemented in EU and EEA in 2018. It is not intended to regulate commercial users and producers of commodities using Fish Pool to hedge salmon prices. Meaning salmon farmers, exporters/importers, processors of salmon etc.
Formally Article 2(1)(j) in MiFID II says the following. Here shortened for easy reading for companies in the value chain of salmon. Please see the full regulation for details:
The directive does not apply to persons (companies)
.. who deal on own account… in commodity derivatives…… provided that ….this is an ancillary activity to their main business, when considered on a group basis…. , and those persons notify annually the relevant competent authority that they make use of this exemption and upon request report to the competent authority the basis on which they consider that their activity …. is ancillary to their main business.
You must notify the Financial Supervisory Authority in your own country:
Most Fish Pool Trade Members are Non-Financial companies. This means the company’s trading at Fish Pool may be both speculative or hedge (reducing your salmon price risk exposure). Every year, before March 31st , the Trade Members must inform their financial supervisory authority that your financial Fish Pool contracts are ancillary (an addition to your main activity). You will thus be exempt from the need of licence for using financial Fish Pool contracts.
Documentation of Ancillary activity:
Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2017/592 specifies the calculations a non-financial company must comply with to continue trading derivatives and avoid the obligation to be licenced as an investment firm.
In case of need for documentation to report that your trading at Fish Pool is ancillary to your main activity, please contact Fish Pool for more information and help.
As Fish Pool at present trades low volumes compared to other commodities all companies have been very far below the limits set by EU. Total “Other commodities” the latest 3 years (2016-18) has been app 1.300 billion EUR. Companies below 3% (app 40 bill EUR) will thus qualify according to the Ancillary calculations. Using 6 EUR/kg as salmon price, companies with more than 6 mill. tonnes in speculative Fish Pool contracts may thus be in breach. All companies are by 2019 below 1% of these volumes in speculative trading, and will thus satisfy the Ancillary activity calculations.
If a Trade Member trades significant volumes in other commodity derivatives in addition to salmon it is obliged to investigate whether it must have a licence as “Investment firm” or not.
How to report to the Financial Supervisory Authority in your own country.
Here are some links and examples:
Norway:
You have to report in Altinn using formula KRT-1165. Click here for a link to a user manual. After you have filled in once, Altinn will send a new formula to your inbox called KRT-1166.
Denmark:
The website of the Danish Finanstilsynet (Danish FSA) is https://www.finanstilsynet.dk, and use this link for “accessorisk virksomhed”.
France:
Follow this link to AMF France for info, and enclosed is the Excel you have to fill in and send for 2020. Excel: AMF notification-form-activite-accessoire
Germany:
Please follow this link to BAFIN for info on how you can send a letter (or email) to BAFIN. You will thus be listed as a company using Ancillary, “Nebentätigkeitsausnahme”.
Netherlands:
Netherlands Autoriteit Financiële Markten (AFM) has made the notification form public at this link. The notification form is at the bottom of the page, under “procedure for licence application and notification”.
Spain:
The website of the Spanish Comisión Nacional del Mercado de Valores (CNMV): http://www.cnmv.es/portal/home.aspx. You fill in: “Notificación de la excepción de Actividad Auxiliar” on this link. View more information here.
United Kingdom:
United Kingdom Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has made the notification form public at this link. Please be aware that this may be updated due to Brexit.
Fish Pool market surveillance
fish p_word _guidelines to app 4
Fish Pool market surveillance
Fish Pool is a regulated market with a licence from the Norwegian Ministry of Finance, under surveillance from Finanstilsynet (the Financial Supervisory Authority of Norway). Fish Pools market must function in accordance with laws and regulations, Fish Pools Rulebook and the public opinions expectations to a regulated market.
Fish Pool is MiFID II compliant and governed by the same rules as regulated financial markets in all EU countries. The Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) is a European regulation that secures the transparency across the European Union’s financial markets and standardizes the regulatory disclosures required for firms operating in the European Union.
Fish Pool market surveillance is obliged to follow the trading activity closely to detect unlawful activities and ensure continuous compliance with the relevant rules and regulations. Trading activity that Fish Pool market surveillance suspects or concludes as a breach of laws and/or regulations will be reported to The Financial Supervisory Authority of Norway.
Oslo Børs (Oslo Stock Exchange) has a department specialised in market surveillance of the shares and bond markets. From May 4th 2020 this department is also surveying the Fish Pool market. The considerations behind the market conduct rules are basically the same for all exchanges; securing against any kind of market manipulation or insider trading.
Fish Pool market surveillance investigates:
- Manipulation of Fish Pools contract prices, including trading at artificial levels to move the price at own advantage
- Insider trading
- False or misleading information made publish for own advantage
- Other relevant cases within market surveillance
Fish Pools employees and trade members are obliged to report to Fish Pool any potential breach relevant for Fish Pool market surveillance according to Fish Pool Rulebook. The public is encouraged to report any potential breach.
Guidelines to App. 4 to the Rulebook, the Market Conduct Rules
According to the Market Conduct Rules, if the Trade Member is in doubt concerning these rules, the Member may consult Fish Pool market surveillance on how to act. Please note that guidance in such respects is not a binding opinion, nor shall Fish Pool be liable for any advice given in such respects. These guidelines are made public to give predictability for our Trade Members concerning Market manipulation and Insider trading.
Contact details:
Fish Pool market surveillance: fishpoolsurveillance@oslobors.no or call +47 22 34 19 11 (calls will be recorded).
Note that Fish Pool tapes all phone calls according to Fish Pool Rulebook and Fish Pool privacy policy.
