Measures to facilitate the application of this Directive 1. Member States shall take the necessary steps to ensure that there are no legal impediments preventing the undertakings included within the scope of supervision on a consolidated basis, mixed-activity holding companies and their subsidiaries, or subsidiaries of the kind covered in Article 3 (10), from exchanging amongst themselves any information which would be relevant for the purposes of supervision in accordance with this Directive.
2.Where a parent undertaking and any of its subsidiaries that are credit institutions are situated in different Member States, the competent authorities of each Member State shall communicate to each other all relevant information which may allow or aid the exercise of supervision on a consolidated basis. Where the competent authorities of the Member State in which a parent undertaking is situated do not themselves exercise supervision on a consolidated basis pursuant to Article 4, they may be invited by the competent authorities responsible for exercising such supervision to ask the parent undertaking for any information which would be relevant for the purposes of supervision on a consolidated basis and to transmit it to these authorities.
3.Member States shall authorize the exchange between their competent authorities of the information referred to in paragraph 2, on the understanding that, in the case of financial holding companies, financial institutions or ancillary banking services undertakings, the collection or possession of information shall not in any way imply that the competent authorities are required to play a supervisory role in relation to those institutions or undertakings standing alone. Similarly, Member States shall authorize their competent authorities to exchange the information referred to in Article 6 on the understanding that the collection or possession of information does not in any way imply that the competent authorities play a supervisory role in relation to the mixed-activity holding company and those of its subsidiaries which are not credit institutions, or to subsidiaries of the kind covered in Article 3 (10).
4.Where a credit institution, financial holding company or a mixed-activity holding company controls one or more subsidiaries which are insurance companies or other undertakings providing investment services which are subject to authorization, the competent authorities and the authorities entrusted with the public task of supervising insurance undertakings or those other undertakings providing investment services shall cooperate closely. Without prejudice to their respective responsibilities, those authorities shall provide one another with any information likely to simplify their task and to allow supervision of the activity and overall financial situation of the undertakings they supervise.
5.Information received pursuant to this Directive and in particular any exchange of information between competent authorities which is provided for in this Directive shall be subject to the obligation of professional secrecy defined in Article 12 of Directive 77/780/EEC.
6.The competent authorities responsible for supervision on a consolidated basis shall establish lists of the financial holding companies referred to in Article 3 (2). Those lists shall be communicated to the competent authorities of the other Member States and to the Commission.
7.Where, in applying this Directive, the competent authorities of one Member State wish in specific cases to verify the information concerning a credit institution, a financial holding company, a financial institution, an ancillary banking services undertaking, a mixed-activity holding company, a subsidiary of the kind covered in Article 6 or a subsidiary of the kind covered in Article 3 (10), situated in another Member State, they must ask the competent authorities of that other Member State to have that verification carried out. The authorities which receive such a request must, within the framework of their competence, act upon it either by carrying out the verification themselves, by allowing the authorities who made the request to carry it out, or by allowing an auditor or expert to carry it out.
8.Without prejudice to their provisions of criminal law, Member States shall ensure that penalties or measures aimed at ending observed breaches or the causes of such breaches may be imposed on financial holding companies and mixed-activity holding companies, or their effective managers, that infringe laws, regulations or administrative provisions enacted to implement this Directive. In certain cases, such measures may require the intervention of the courts. The competent authorities shall cooperate closely to ensure that the abovementioned penalties or measures produce the desired results, especially when the central administration or main establishment of a financial holding company or of a mixed-activity holding company is not located at its head office.