New Zealand has been putting the finishing touches to its Financial Markets Conduct Regime with a recently enacted order that allows for simplified disclosure and provides clarification about the reconciliation of derivatives investor money held in trust.

The regime is administered by the country's Financial Markets Authority. The order, now in force, provides for non-standard disclosures by:

• allowing the use of a simplified product disclosure statement (PDS) for some offers of debt securities or equity securities;
• containing disclosure requirements for offers of convertible financial products;
• amending some limited disclosure document requirements to provide for bank hybrid products (i.e. debt securities issued by a bank that will be converted into another product if the bank is in financial difficulties). The additional disclosures include warnings about the risks of these products;
• providing for a product disclosure statement for an offer of managed investment products to incorporate a fund update by reference and for that fund update to be given to investors. In this case certain information may be omitted from the PDS;
• for information on a particular participant to be included in a supplement, rather than in the statement, for schemes with more than one participant.

The order also clarifies some disclosure-related requirements by:

• describing the financial information that must be provided in a PDS when a member of the issuing group has acquired a business or subsidiary
• providing for the modification of a PDS for an offer of debt securities, where the securities are issued by a MIS.

Some requirements to do with registers are to come into force on 1 Jun 2016:

• requiring the status of a managed fund to be specified in the register entry (e.g. whether the fund is open to new investments); and
• referring to the timing of confirmation notices.

Some requirements to do with continuing disclosure are to come into force on 17 Dec 2015:

• requiring certain information on defined benefit schemes to be made available to investors on request;
• providing for fund updates to be prepared for multi-fund investment options or investment options involving life cycle stages (transitional provision end on 30 Nov 2016); and
• containing information to be provided to investors about derivatives (transitional provision ends 30 Nov 2016).

There is also some clarification about the reconciliation of derivatives investor money held in trust. The amendments allow for either an equity-based reconciliation or a cash-based reconciliation.