(1)

‘index’ means any figure:

(2)

‘index provider’ means a natural or legal person that has control over the provision of an index;

(3)

‘benchmark’ means any index by reference to which the amount payable under a financial instrument or a financial contract, or the value of a financial instrument, is determined, or an index that is used to measure the performance of an investment fund with the purpose of tracking the return of such index or of defining the asset allocation of a portfolio or of computing the performance fees;

(4)

‘family of benchmarks’ means a group of benchmarks provided by the same administrator and determined from input data of the same nature which provides specific measures of the same or similar market or economic reality;

(5)

‘provision of a benchmark’ means:

(6)

‘administrator’ means a natural or legal person that has control over the provision of a benchmark;

(7)

‘use of a benchmark’ means:

(8)

‘contribution of input data’ means providing any input data not readily available to an administrator, or to another person for the purposes of passing to an administrator, that is required in connection with the determination of a benchmark, and is provided for that purpose;

(9)

‘contributor’ means a natural or legal person contributing input data;

(10)

‘supervised contributor’ means a supervised entity that contributes input data to an administrator located in the Union;

(11)

‘submitter’ means a natural person employed by the contributor for the purpose of contributing input data;

(12)

‘assessor’ means an employee of an administrator of a commodity benchmark, or any other natural person whose services are placed at the administrator's disposal or under the control of the administrator, and who is responsible for applying a methodology or judgement to input data and other information to reach a conclusive assessment about the price of a certain commodity;

(13)

‘expert judgement’ means the exercise of discretion by an administrator or a contributor with respect to the use of data in determining a benchmark, including extrapolating values from prior or related transactions, adjusting values for factors that might influence the quality of data such as market events or impairment of a buyer or seller's credit quality, and weighting firm bids or offers greater than a particular concluded transaction;

(14)

‘input data’ means the data in respect of the value of one or more underlying assets, or prices, including estimated prices, quotes, committed quotes or other values, used by an administrator to determine a benchmark;

(15)

‘transaction data’ means observable prices, rates, indices or values representing transactions between unaffiliated counterparties in an active market subject to competitive supply and demand forces;

(16)

‘financial instrument’ means any of the instruments listed in Section C of Annex I to Directive 2014/65/EU for which a request for admission to trading on a trading venue, as defined in point (24) of Article 4(1) of Directive 2014/65/EU, has been made or which is traded on a trading venue as defined in point (24) of Article 4(1) of Directive 2014/65/EU or via a systematic internaliser as defined in point (20) of Article 4(1) of that Directive;

(17)

‘supervised entity’ means any of the following:

(18)

‘financial contract’ means:

(19)

‘investment fund’ means an AIF as defined in point (a) of Article 4(1) of Directive 2011/61/EU, or a UCITS as defined in Article 1(2) of Directive 2009/65/EC;

(20)

‘management body’ means the body or bodies of an administrator or another supervised entity which are appointed in accordance with national law, which are empowered to set the strategy, objectives and overall direction of the administrator or other supervised entity, and which oversee and monitor management decision-making and include persons who effectively direct the business of the administrator or other supervised entity;

(21)

‘consumer’ means a natural person who, in financial contracts covered by this Regulation, is acting for purposes which are outside his or her trade, business or profession;

(22)

‘interest rate benchmark’ means a benchmark which for the purposes of point (1)(b)(ii) of this paragraph is determined on the basis of the rate at which banks may lend to, or borrow from, other banks, or agents other than banks, in the money market;

(23)

‘commodity benchmark’ means a benchmark where the underlying asset for the purposes of point (1)(b)(ii) of this paragraph is a commodity within the meaning of point (1) of Article 2 of Commission Regulation (EC) No 1287/2006 (21), excluding emission allowances as referred to in point (11) of Section C of Annex I to Directive 2014/65/EU;

(24)

‘regulated-data benchmark’ means a benchmark determined by the application of a formula from:

(25)

‘critical benchmark’ means a benchmark other than a regulated-data benchmark that fulfils any of the conditions laid down in Article 20(1) and which is on the list established by the Commission pursuant to that Article;

(26)

‘significant benchmark’ means a benchmark that fulfils the conditions laid down in Article 24(1);

(27)

‘non-significant benchmark’ means a benchmark that does not fulfil the conditions laid down in Articles 20(1) and 24(1);

(28)

‘located’ means, in relation to a legal person, the country where that person's registered office or other official address is situated and, in relation to a natural person, the country where that person is resident for tax purposes;

(29)

‘public authority’ means: