1. Member States shall require that investment firms authorised to
execute orders on behalf of clients implement procedures and arrangements
which provide for the prompt, fair and expeditious execution of
client orders, relative to other client orders or the trading interests of the
investment firm.
These procedures or arrangements shall allow for the execution of otherwise
comparable client orders in accordance with the time of their reception
by the investment firm.
2. Member States shall require that, in the case of a client limit order
in respect of shares admitted to trading on a regulated market which are
not immediately executed under prevailing market conditions, investment
firms are, unless the client expressly instructs otherwise, to take
measures to facilitate the earliest possible execution of that order by
making public immediately that client limit order in a manner which is
easily accessible to other market participants. Member States may decide
that investment firms comply with this obligation by transmitting the
client limit order to a regulated market and/or MTF. Member States shall
provide that the competent authorities may waive the obligation to make
public a limit order that is large in scale compared with normal market
size as determined under Article 44(2).
3. In order to ensure that measures for the protection of investors and
fair and orderly functioning of markets take account of technical developments
in financial markets, and to ensure the uniform application of
paragraphs 1 and 2, the Commission shall adopt, in accordance with the
procedure referred to in Article 64(2), implementing measures which
define:
(a) the conditions and nature of the procedures and arrangements which
result in the prompt, fair and expeditious execution of client orders
and the situations in which or types of transaction for which investment
firms may reasonably deviate from prompt execution so as to
obtain more favourable terms for clients;
(b) the different methods through which an investment firm can be
deemed to have met its obligation to disclose not immediately
executable client limit orders to the market.