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Thursday, January 7, 2021

Equity Trader Alert #2021 - 2
Guidance Related to Compliance with Executive Order 13959 for Issuers of Exchange Traded Products and Closed-End Funds


Category:

  • Industry Announcement

Markets Impacted:

Contact Information:

Executive Order 13959 (“EO 13959”) of November 12, 2020 (available here: https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/126/13959.pdf ) prohibits, beginning at 9:30 a.m. eastern standard time on January 11, 2021, any transaction by a United States person in publicly traded securities, or any securities that are derivative of, or are designated to provide investment exposure to, companies identified as of the date of EO 13959 as a Communist Chinese military company (“CCMC”). This same prohibition applies to publicly traded securities, or any securities that are derivative of, or are designed to provide investment exposure to such securities, of companies identified after the date of EO 13959 beginning at 9:30 a.m. eastern standard time on the date that is 60 days after such identification. EO 13959 further permits purchases for value or sales solely to divest, in whole or in part, from securities held by any United States person, in accordance with timeframes specified in the Executive Order. For purposes of this notice, the meanings of “United States person,” “transaction,” “security,” “publicly traded,” “derivative of, or designed to provide investment exposure to” and “Communist Chinese military company” are the same as defined in EO 13959, as further interpreted in Frequently Asked Questions (“FAQs”) and any other public guidance issued by the US. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) or other relevant United States regulatory agency.

Nasdaq reminds its listed issuers, including issuers of closed-end funds and exchange traded products, of their obligation to comply with EO 19359 and related guidance thereon from OFAC or any other relevant regulatory agency. Nasdaq further reminds its listed issuers of their obligation to comply with the requirements related to the disclosure of material information in Listing Rule 5250(b)(1) and IM-5250-1. In Nasdaq’s view, an issuer’s determination that a transaction in its listed securities would violate EO 13959 is material news that must be immediately disclosed to the marketplace in accordance with applicable Nasdaq rules, and as the listing market, Nasdaq would expect to halt trading in the listed security on all US exchanges based on that news. Nasdaq would also halt unlisted trading privileges trading of securities halted by other listing markets, and halt options trading on any halted security.

Questions regarding the actions taken by Nasdaq in response to EO 13959 may be directed to ETP_Regulation@nasdaq.com.

 

 

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