ARTICLE
22 April 2026

The UK’s New Short Selling Regime Launches

CW
Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP

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Cadwalader, established in 1792, serves a diverse client base, including many of the world's leading financial institutions, funds and corporations. With offices in the United States and Europe, Cadwalader offers legal representation in antitrust, banking, corporate finance, corporate governance, executive compensation, financial restructuring, intellectual property, litigation, mergers and acquisitions, private equity, private wealth, real estate, regulation, securitization, structured finance, tax and white collar defense.
This comprehensive regulatory update examines critical developments across global financial services, from the UK's FCA implementing new short selling rules and deferred payment credit regulations to the US federal banking agencies proposing revised Basel III capital requirements. The analysis explores how regulators are modernizing frameworks for bank supervision, resolution planning, and emerging technologies like tokenized commodities and payment stablecoins.
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On 16 April, the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) published Policy Statement 26/5 on “Changes to the UK Short Selling Regime” (PS 26/5) which forms part of the UK government’s programme to repeal and replace retained European Union (EU) law post-Brexit (for our earlier note on this see here). In addition to this repeal and replace exercise, PS 26/5 aims to reduce some of the inefficiencies and disproportionately burdensome aspects of the previous short selling regime by:

  • Removing the requirement for market makers to notify each financial instrument they want to benefit from the market maker exemption to report. Market makers will only be required to submit a single ‘activity based’ notification such that they can use the exemption for market making activities in any financial instrument;
  • The FCA, consequently, is continuing to accept notifications via email and not is updating arrangements to automate the notification process from the start of the new regime;
  • The FCA has extended the date when the new rules come into force, with phase 1 and the new short selling rules now starting on July 13.

The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.

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