REGULATORY PROJECT OF THE BCU REFERRING TO INTERMEDIARIES OF SECURITIES AND INVESTMENT ADVISORS

On December 13th, 2017 the Central Bank of Uruguay (hereinafter BCU) announced a regulatory reform project that will be incorporated into the BCU's Securities Market Rules Compilation, that introduces modifications to the regulation of investment advisors and securities intermediaries. Also, a new license for the administration of third-party investments called portfolio manager is created.

This project as it is proposed describes several activities that according to their content "define the securities intermediary license", that in turn, contains a list of activities that the project considers as "complementary".

The project also intends to incorporate new requirements related to the operation, stability and solvency that the securities intermediaries must have. In addition, modifications are incorporated in the guarantees that the securities intermediaries must permanently establish and keep in favor of the BCU while they keep their activity.

As in the case of securities intermediaries, this project, as proposed, describes several activities that according to their content “define the investment’s advisor’s license” that in turn, contains a list of activities that the project considers as “complementary”. New requirements for guarantees are established that the investment advisors must establish and keep permanently in the presence of the BCU while they keep their activity.

The normative project creates a new figure called a portfolio manager. This figure would be located in an intermediate position between securities intermediaries and investment advisors if we take into account their permitted faculties.

The project defines them as legal entities that, in a professional and habitual manner, administer the investments of third parties according to the administrative powers provided by them and that are not reached by another figure supervised by the BCU.

This report simply tries to mention and summarize the modifications we consider most relevant that this normative project pretends to incorporate to the BCU‘s Market Rules Compilation.