Resolution no. 22478

Order, pursuant to article 7-octies, paragraph 1, letter b) of Legislative Decree no. 58/1998 ("Consolidated Law on Finance") to cease the infringement of article 18 of the Consolidated Law on Finance performed through the website https://bb360.market

La Commissione Nazionale per le Società e la Borsa
[The National Commission for Companies and the Stock Exchange]

HAVING REGARD TO Law no. 216 of 7 June 1974 and subsequent amendments and supplements;

HAVING REGARD TO Legislative Decree no. 58 of 24th February 1998 ("Consolidated Law on Finance") and subsequent amendments and supplements;

HAVING ESTABLISHED that, from checks on the web, it emerged that:

i. the website https://bb360.market, which is active and also available in Italian by means of a machine translation system, offers potential investors the opportunity, through a dedicated trading platform, to trade shares, indices, CFDs on currencies, and commodities;

ii. in order to place such trading transactions, users must register with the website https://bb360.market, through a process that is also available to users connecting from Italy, and open a trading account and deposit relevant funds; specifically, five different types of accounts are advertised on the website which differ, among other things, according to the required deposit. After registration, users can access the reserved area of the website, where it is possible to make deposits on the trading account;

iii. with regard to the traceability of the website https://bb360.market, in addition to numerous generic references in different sections of the website to the "BB360" with a generic address in London, the "General Terms & Conditions" section available online refers as a counterparty to the "customer agreement" to the "BB360.market EU Limited", with reported registered office in Dublin, Ireland;

WHEREAS the activity carried out through the website https://bb360.market is deemed to constitute the provision of investment services within the meaning of article 1, paragraph 5, of the Consolidated Law on Finance, given that users are offered the opportunity to open a trading account and place buy and/or sell orders on financial instruments;

WHEREAS the above activity, carried out through the website https://bb360.market, is still ongoing and is aimed at Italian investors, given that said website is available in Italian by means of machine translation systems, and that cold calling of Italian customers has been reported, and no mechanism was found to block registration by users attempting to register with the website from Italy/through Italian IP addresses;

WHEREAS the subjects mentioned on the website https://bb360.market are not authorised to provide investment services to the Italian public, insofar as they are not listed on the dedicated register kept by Consob pursuant to Article 20 of the Consolidated Law on Finance;

HAVING REGARD to the fact that the provision of investment services and activities is reserved to licensed parties as referred to under article 18, paragraph 1, of the Consolidated Law on Finance, pursuant to which, "The professional provision of investment services and activities to the public is reserved to Italian investment firms, EU investment firms, Italian banks, EU banks and non-EU firms";

HAVING ESTABLISHED, therefore, that the operations in question qualify as the professional provision of investment services to the Italian public, in infringement of art. 18, paragraph 1 of the Consolidated Law on Finance;

HAVING REGARD TO the fact that, according to the provisions of article 7-octies, letter b) of the Consolidated Law on Finance - "Powers to counteract abusive practices" - Consob "may, with regard to anyone who offers or carries out investment services or activities over the Internet without being qualified to do so pursuant to this decree: […] b) order the cessation of the infringement";

CONSIDERING it therefore necessary, in the light of the foregoing, to adopt this Resolution immediately for reasons of urgency;

RESOLVES:

To order the cessation of the infringement of article 18 of Legislative Decree no. 58/98 via the https://bb360.market site, consisting in the offering and provision of investment services and activities to the Italian public.

This Resolution shall be brought to the attention of the all the concerned parties and published in the Consob Bulletin.

This measure may be appealed before the Regional Administrative Court of Lazio within 60 days of the date of service.

11 October 2022

THE CHAIRMAN
Paolo Savona