ESMA Chair delivers address at European Parliament on GameStop

The Chair of the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), Steven Maijoor, has delivered an address to MEPs of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs on recent GameStop matters, the first time an EU regulator has remarked on the incident apart from an ESMA statement warning of the risks of market manipulation.

Between January and February 2021, GameStop, a videogame retail chain experiencing financial difficulties, suffered a surge in its share trading due to an organised action by retail traders who had coordinated to buy shares in the company via dedicated trading channels in the social media platform Reddit. These traders had realised that Wall Street investment funds had been ‘shorting’ GameStop’s stocks, meani