July 2018 was not all about the World Cup and the politics that went with it, but also about some further clarity on BREXIT and what it means for financial services on both sides of the divorce proceedings in what looks to be more of a "messy Brexit". Full details on how the EU's updated Supervisory Principles on Relocations (SPoRs) impact existing and future business operations, legal entity structuring along with contractual continuity and a host of other BREXIT-proofing to-do's are available from a series of Client Alerts on the topic. The tone remains tough. And even if one country may be leaving the EU, early-stage preparations were now very much underway to extend both Eurozone and Banking Union membership to other EU member states.

July also saw a flurry of other regulatory reform proposals being published ahead of the European summer break for most of August, and some of these are set out in this month's Newsletter and in our in-depth Thought Leadership selection. Some of the key trends affecting the Banking Union ahead of the return to business as usual in September include the rolling-out of SREP supervisory methodology as well as changes that the ECB-SSM and the EU Commission have presented as more pragmatic/proportionate measures to resolve existing but also preventing future non-performing loans and exposures, which may mean more supervisory scrutiny from September onwards.

Monitoring and intervening in product-specific risks remained at the forefront in July. Cyber-resilience and crypto assets, a long-term supervisory priority, became an issue for the ECB, acting as central bank, in publishing new methodology on evaluating cyber-resilience as well as the FSB publishing further approaches on crypto-assets. Consumer protection was also in focus in July and remains so with further changes coming into force during August, as ESMA made use of intervention powers in respect of certain CFDs and binary options, and our coverage assesses what this might mean going-forward.

We hope you enjoy this month's edition and wish you a great summer.

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