Italy – Submission to CONSOB of marketing material – new system (DePub) active from 1 September 2025 (CONSOB Note of 7 August 2025)

1     Background

CONSOB has recently published a note (the “Note”) concerning the introduction, as of next September 1^st, 2025, of a new specific CONSOB portal for the submission of advertisement materials addressed to Italian investors and concerning any offer of financial instruments. This portal is called “DePub”, i.e., “Deposito Pubblicità”. For an English version of the relevant announcement see:

https://www.consob.it/web/consob-and-its-activities/news-in-detail/-/asset_publisher/kcxlUuOyjO9x/content/advice-of-7-august-2025-marketing-communications-/718268

The Note provides that, from next September 1^st, 2025, the financial intermediaries such as funds, their ManCos/AIFMs and the Italian distributors, will be able to complete the registration procedure for the DePub portal in order to access the system, whereas the use of the same will be compulsory from January 1^st, 2026. This registration shall be made according to instructions and manuals that should be available on the Consob web page from September 1^st.  In the event of difficulties accessing and/or transmitting data via the DePub system (and if the problem cannot be resolved with the assistance of the help desk) the documentation for the registration in the portal can be sent via the Italian “PEC” (acronym for “Posta Elettronica Certificata”) certified e-mails, which is generally available to any entity domiciled in Italy

During the last few years our contacts at CONSOB  repeatedly informed us of the forthcoming of this new DePub system, anticipating us that the transmission of advertising material will be “product related” and that marketing  materials to be submitted should always comply with the regulations currently in force, namely Article 101, paragraph 1, of the Consolidated Law on Finance (Legislative Decree no. 58 of 1998, as amended), the ESMA Guidelines on marketing communications (ESMA34-45-1272 IT of August 2, 2021) and CONSOB Regulation no. 11971 of 1999, as amended, on Issuers of Financial Instruments.

Although CONSOB still didn’t disclose the characteristics of the DePub system, it is possible that it will be similar to the Deprof system (as known, the other CONSOB portal used for the deposit of retail sales documents such as prospectuses, KIDs and Italian application forms with Annex). Thus, it can be expected that the marketing materials will be submitted by entering the relevant ISIN code(s), so long as the controlling criterion used by CONSOB’s for identifying what is or is not advertising material remains that of being “product related”. Thus, in general, if there is no mention of a particular product no submission will be necessary to CONSOB.

2        Applicable deadline

The Note provides that Supervised entities are recommended to use the new system during the transitional period which ends on 31 December 2025.

At the end of the transitional period (i.e., as anticipated, from January 1^st,  2026), advertising material shall be transmitted to Consob exclusively via the DePub system.

As always, we remain available to provide assistance with regard to the registration process to the new DePub portal, the review of marketing materials, as well as the subsequent submission to CONSOB.