1.This Directive shall apply to all investment firms. Only paragraph 4 of this Article and Articles 8 (2), 10, 11, 12, first paragraph, 14 (3) and (4), 15, 19 and 20, however, shall apply to credit institutions the authorization of which, under Directives 77/780/EEC and 89/646/EEC, covers one or more of the investment services listed in Section A of the Annex to this Directive.
2.This Directive shall not apply to: (a) insurance undertakings as defined in Article 1 of Directive 73/239/EEC (10) or Article 1 of Directive 79/267/EEC (11) or undertakings carrying on the reinsurance and retrocession activities referred to in Directive 64/225/EEC (12); (b) firms which provide investment services exclusively for their parent undertakings, for their subsidiaries or for other subsidiaries of their parent undertakings; (c) persons providing an investment service where that service is provided in an incidental manner in the course of a professional activity and that activity is regulated by legal or regulatory provisions or a code of ethics governing the profession which do not exclude the provision of that service; (d) firms that provide investment services consisting exclusively in the administration of employee-participation schemes; (e) firms that provide investment services that consist in providing both the services referred to in (b) and those referred to in (d); (f) the central banks of Member States and other national bodies performing similar functions and other public bodies charged with or intervening in the management of the public debt; (g) firms - which may not hold clients' funds or securities and which for that reason may not at any time place themselves in debit with their clients, and - which may not provide any investment service except the reception and transmission of orders in transferable securities and units in collective investment undertakings, and - which in the course of providing that service may transmit orders only to (i) investment firms authorized in accordance with this Directive; (ii) credit institutions authorized in accordance with Directives 77/780/EEC and 89/646/ EEC; (iii) branches of investment firms or of credit institutions which are authorized in a third country and which are subject to and comply with prudential rules considered by the competent authorities as at least as stringent as those laid down in this Directive, in Directive 89/646/EEC or in Directive 93/6/EEC; (iv) collective investment undertakings authorized under the law of a Member State to market units to the public and to the managers of such undertakings; (v) investment companies with fixed capital, as defined in Article 15 (4) of Directive 77/91/EEC (13), the securities of which are listed or dealt in on a regulated market in a Member State; - the activities of which are governed at national level by rules or by a code of ethics; (h) collective investment undertakings whether coordinated at Community level or not and the depositaries and managers of such undertakings; (i) persons whose main business is trading in commodities amongst themselves or with producers or professional users of such products and who provide investment services only for such producers and professional users to the extent necessary for their main business; (j) firms that provide investment services consisting exclusively in dealing for their own account on financial-futures or options markets or which deal for the accounts of other members of those markets or make prices for them and which are guaranteed by clearing members of the same markets. Responsibility for ensuring the performance of contracts entered into by such firms must be assumed by clearing members of the same markets; (k) associations set up by Danish pension funds with the sole aim of managing the assets of pension funds that are members of those associations; (l) 'agenti di cambio' whose activities and functions are governed by Italian Royal Decree No 222 of 7 March 1925 and subsequent provisions amending it, and who are authorized to carry on their activities under Article 19 of Italian Law No 1 of 2 January 1991.
3.No later than 31 December 1998 and at regular intervals thereafter the Commission shall report on the application of paragraph 2 in conjunction with Section A of the Annex and shall, where appropriate, propose amendments to the definition of the exclusions and the services covered in the light of the operation of this Directive.
4.The rights conferred by this Directive shall not extend to the provision of services as counterparty to the State, the central bank or other Member State national bodies performing similar functions in the pursuit of the monetary, exchange-rate, public-debt and reserves management policies of the Member State concerned.