ESMA will seat a new chair on 1 November 2026. The Council of the European Union confirmed Carlo Comporti's appointment at its Brussels meeting on 9 October, ending a five-year run under Verena Ross.

The leadership handover lands midstream on technical standards that buy-side and sell-side desks already have to code into order routers, pre-trade checks and post-trade reporting feeds. Comporti has been voting on those files as an ESMA Board of Supervisors member since February 2022.

What does the chair change mean for desks?

ESMA's chair does not draft legislation but signs off on binding technical standards, Q&As and opinions under MiFIR and MiFID II — the regime that governs trade reporting, the systematic internaliser framework, consolidated tape construction, and bond and derivative transparency.

The board's tone on those files filters into the APA and ARM operating rules, SI quoting obligations and double-volume-cap calculations that desks run against in real time.

Ross, in a statement, said: "It is a pleasure to welcome Carlo as the new Chair of ESMA... I look forward to seeing ESMA continue to grow under his leadership." She added that her five years leading the authority had been "a true honour."

What is Comporti's regulatory background?

Comporti joins from CONSOB, the Italian markets watchdog, where he has served as Commissioner since February 2022. His resume threads across most of the EU's post-crisis supervisory architecture:

• Chair of ESMA's Digital Finance Standing Committee, where he has overseen ESMA work on the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), DLT pilot regimes and the digital operational resilience rules that flow into trading-venue and intermediary supervision.
• Member of the IOSCO Board and chair of its Audit and Finance Committee.
• Secretary General of the Committee of European Securities Regulators (CESR) from 2008, during the 2010 to 2011 transition to ESMA itself.

Before CONSOB, Comporti spent eleven years in private-sector consulting: CEO of Promontory Italy, COO of Promontory Europe (an IBM Consulting business unit) from 2011 to 2022, and Directeur Général of Promontory France.

He will be the third chair of ESMA since the authority launched under EU Regulation 1095/2010.

How does his Digital Finance brief matter for execution?

MiCA, which took full effect in late 2024, imposes white-paper disclosures, capital and governance obligations on crypto-asset service providers. Some trading firms now operate CASPs alongside traditional market-making books, which means ESMA's interpretive work on the regime directly touches product classification and reporting codes.

DLT pilot regimes meanwhile have brought settlement on distributed ledgers into the scope of trading-venue authorisation that ESMA coordinates at the EU level.

Incoming Chair Comporti said: "ESMA plays a critical role in ensuring that European markets further develop and integrate, to support the needs of companies, investors and citizens."

What remains open?

ESMA's 2026 work programme, inherited from Ross's term, still covers:

• Final technical standards under the EU Listing Act.
• Consolidated tape tender outcomes for bonds and equities.
• The bond and derivative transparency calibrations.
• Ongoing MiCA supervisory convergence.

The board will run on Ross's signature through 31 October. Whether the chair change accelerates or slows any of these deliverables is the open question for desks that have to code rule changes before trading against them.