Are you pulling up your SOX on MiFID ?

Once a company is MiFID compliant, they will be able to operate throughout the European Economic Area (EU plus Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein, etc.) with one main regulator (**). The intention of the EU commission was to stimulate and facilitate the creation of a single market for financial services.

Meanwhile on the other side of the Atlantic there is a very large single market for financial product, the US of A. Companies operating in that market have to comply with Sarbanes Oxley regulations (SOX), this applies to all companies operating in the US irrespective of where their headquarter is based.

Therefore both US companies operating in Europe and European companies with an interest in the US have to look at the interaction between MiFID and SOX, since they will have to comply with both.

A quick look at Sarbanes Oxley highlightes two areas of 'joint compliance' plus the audit trail and the storage of information.

Both regulations have conflict of interests rules. They are not aimed at the same thing but they have to live happily together, this is more work for the legal eagles.

Investment Research is another common area, Sarbanes Oxley title V "Analyst conflicts of interest" needs to be considered when looking at Investment Research under MiFID and may ultimately have an impact in the 'suitability and accountability' section of MiFID.

MiFID impacts the audit trail and therefore implies making sure that any changes to it wll not have a negative impact on SOX compliance

MiFID has its own requirements to store information, although there is no indication of potential conflicts with long term storage requirements under SOX one should check before implementation starts.

Overall, this is just something else to consider on your way to MiFID implementation. By the way, if you are within the jurisdiction of the FSA you have less than 8 months !

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(**) This of course implies overall compliance with MiFID. There are only few jurisdictions within the EU that have met the first deadline for the translation of EU directives in their jurisdiction.