Communication with BaFin is now easier for issuers of securities prospectuses in English. As the authority writes in the June 2018 issue of the BaFin Journal, it removes language barriers, especially for international issuers, and now permits the use of English in the approval procedure for securities prospectuses or base prospectuses, insofar as this is legally possible.

For Andrea Korte, Managing Director of factor-i GmbH Zertifikatefabrik, this is an important step in positioning Germany as a financial centre in competition with other financial centres. “This makes BaFin more attractive for international issuers as the responsible supervisory authority. It simplifies the business processes of the issuers by dispensing with texts only in German. This substantially speeds up the internal processing of approval procedures and does not make foreign-language employees dependent on a translation of the texts.

According to Andrea Korte, this should have no influence on investor protection. “The summary and often even the complete set of the final terms of securities prospectuses will continue to be published in the national language of the offering country.

Information provided by BaFin on 16 June 2018 in English