FCA Cracks Down on Listed Companies Using RNS Announcements as Marketing

The Financial Conduct Authority used its latest Primary Market Bulletin, published 28 August 2026, to put listed companies on notice over a specific pattern of abuse it's been observing in regulatory announcements: some issuers, the FCA says, are releasing content through Regulatory Information Service feeds — the official channel meant for material, price-sensitive disclosures — using language that reads more like marketing copy than genuine regulated information. The bulletin identifies three recurring patterns behind this: frequent announcements carrying limited genuine informational value, updates classified as containing inside information when they don't meet that bar, and releases timed to land during periods of unusual share price volatility in ways that look designed to shape investor sentiment rather than simply relay facts.

It's worth being precise about what this is and isn't. Primary Market Bulletin 65 is supervisory guidance from the regulator, not a new law working its way through Parliament — the obligations it discusses trace back to the UK Market Abuse Regulation, specifically Article 17's requirements around public disclosure of inside information, which already applies across all UK trading venues, not just the Main Market or specifically AIM. What's changing operationally is enforcement emphasis and one concrete new filing requirement, not the underlying legal framework itself.

That concrete change lands on Monday 21 September 2026. From that date, any new equity case submitted through the FCA's Electronic Submission System — the portal companies and their advisers use to submit listing-related documents for review — must include a new form as part of the first submission, declaring whether the submission contains inside information and, if so, setting out what it is. This applies broadly, including to guidance requests, not just formal listing applications. The practical effect is to push the question of whether something genuinely constitutes inside information to the front of the process, rather than leaving it to be inferred later from how a company chose to classify and distribute an announcement.

The underlying incentive problem the FCA is responding to is fairly easy to understand even without the legal detail. Tagging a routine operational update as containing inside information forces it out through the same regulated news distribution channels used for genuinely material disclosures — results, major contract wins, board changes — giving a minor update a level of prominence and perceived credibility that ordinary marketing material wouldn't get. For smaller, less liquid listed companies in particular, that prominence can translate into short-term trading activity and share price movement disproportionate to the actual news, which is precisely the dynamic the FCA is signalling it intends to police more closely going forward.

None of this stops a listed company from promoting itself — the FCA's own framing is specifically about where that promotion happens, not whether it can happen at all. Marketing content, investor updates that don't meet the bar for inside information, and general company promotion remain entirely legitimate through a company's own website, its social media channels, non-regulatory financial newswires, and investor relations communications generally. The distinction PMB 65 is drawing a firmer line around is specifically the use of the regulated news distribution channel — RNS and equivalent Regulatory Information Services — for content that doesn't meet the genuine inside-information bar the channel exists to serve.

For boards, company secretaries, and the nominated advisers who guide smaller listed companies through their disclosure obligations, the practical shift is one of accountability sitting earlier in the process. Rather than a classification decision made somewhat informally at the point of drafting an announcement, the new ESS declaration form creates an explicit, documented judgement call at the point of submission — one that boards and advisers will need to be able to justify if the FCA later asks why something was, or wasn't, classified as inside information. Alongside the RNS marketing warning, the same bulletin also covers the FCA's review of delayed disclosure notifications under UK MAR's Article 17(4) and sponsors' approaches to financial and working capital due diligence — both pointing in the same broader direction of the regulator paying closer attention to how issuers exercise judgement around what does and doesn't need to be disclosed, and when.

For retail investors and corporate communications teams alike, the signal worth taking from this bulletin is less about the specific 21 September filing change and more about direction of travel: the FCA is treating the boundary between genuine regulatory disclosure and company self-promotion as something worth actively policing, not a grey area companies can quietly lean into. Listed companies, particularly smaller-cap issuers with the most incentive to use regulatory prominence as a marketing shortcut, should expect closer scrutiny of both how frequently they're issuing RNS announcements and how those announcements are classified going forward.