Archive for the ‘Asia-Pacific’ Category

Tuesday, Aug 18, 2009 DUBAI (Zawya Dow Jones) — Saudi Arabia Tuesday imposed its first jail sentence for insider trading, ordering the former chairman of Bishah Agricultural Development Co. (6080.SA) to jail for three months, according to the country’s Capital Market Authority, or CMA.

Najam Eddin Ahmad Najam Eddin was sentenced to the prison term and fined SR100,000 ($26,670) after he was found “guilty of insider trading in Bishah shares based on him being the chairman of the company’s board,” the market regulator said in a statement on its Web site Najam Eddin also was barred from working for any listed company for five years, the CMA said.

The regulator said it also ordered him to pay back an amount of SAR52,690 gained through “irregular actions.”

Taiwan News – Now that former president Chen Shui-bian has been taken into custody, there has still been a string of scandals directly or indirectly related to Chen’s case and one of them is the snowballing insider-trading scandal allegedly involving Chen’s son-in-law Chao Chien-ming.Chao, a prime suspect in the Taiwan Development Corporation insider-trading scandal, appeared before the judge this morning as the High Court opened a trial into insider trading charges against Chao, his father, and other two defendants.

The High Court sentenced Chao to seven years and Chao’s father to nine years in prison and NT$30 million on charges of violating the Securities and Exchange Act.

After the trial this morning, Chao said that although he was the then president’s son-in-law, he did not know that his actions constituted insider trading. He said that he and his father would certainly appeal their sentences.

Also today’s verdict sentenced another two defendants, businessman Yu Shih-yi and former TDC chairman Su The-jien, the former was sentenced to seven years and two months with NT$60 million fine and the latter seven years with NT$30 million fine.

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The Daily Yomiuri Online writes about an employee of a Tokyo-based IT company listed on the Mothers Section illegally profited through the short selling of a large number of shares in the company by using insider information related to its poor business performance, sources familiar with the case said.

The alleged illicit trader is an employee of Minato Ward-based e-Seikatsu Co., which is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Market of High-Growth and Emerging Stocks.

The Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission will urge the Financial Service Agency to issue the company employee with an order–on suspicion of insider trading in violation of the Financial Instrument and Exchange Law–to pay about 20 million yen in penalties for the illicit share trading, according to the sources.

If the penalty is issued, it will be a record high imposed on an individual trader for violating the law.

Read the whole story …

XinHuaNet writes that employees of financial institutes who take advantage of non-public information for personal gains in trading will face criminal prosecution, according to the draft amendment to the Criminal Law submitted to China’s top legislature Monday. Employees of fund management companies, securities firms, commercial banks and other financial establishments could be jailed for up to 10 years and fined up to five times of their illegal gains, if they seek, or advise others, to profit from non-public information, the draft says.

The draft amendment, submitted to the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC) for its first hearing, marks the country’s latest initiative to crack down on insider trading.

The existing Criminal Law bans individuals with access to classified information from trading in related stocks and securities. The prohibition did not include other non-public information such as the fund flow information of the company’s trusted funds

    The amendment came after an insider trading case involving TangJian, a fund manager at the Shanghai-based China International Fund Management Co., in which JP Morgan Asset Management (UK) Limited holds a 49-percent stake.

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FT.com wrote: Nomura Holdings said on Tuesday that it had fired an employee who was being questioned by Japan’s Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission on suspicions of insider trading. Japan’s largest securities firm said an employee had breached internal trading rules forbidding staff in the
investment banking department from trading shares.

The incident allegedly involved a relatively junior employee who had access to mergers and acquisitions information during his on-the-job training period in the Tokyo office, where he worked from February 2006 until the end of last year.

Under company rules, Nomura employees are required to conduct any market trading through accounts with Nomura, which allows such activity to be monitored. However, the employee in question allegedly traded through friends using an account at another broker.

Kenichi Watanabe, Nomura’s recently appointed chief executive, said on Tuesday: “We are a mirror of the stock market and that mirror should be straight at all times, so I am very sorry about what happened.”

He said the scandal would have a negative effect on the company, which recently experienced its largest management reshuffle in a decade. Some Japanese pension funds and other institutional investors have internal rules forbidding them from employing brokerages implicated in a scandal.

“Obviously, we believe we will be affected to some extent, since we have lost the trust of our customers,” said Mr Watanabe. The incident could also undermine regulators’ efforts to attract Japanese retail investors back into the stock market.

This year, the Japanese public has been shocked by insider trading allegations against staff at NHK, the public broadcaster, as well as against a certified public accountant who worked for Ernst & Young ShinNihon, Japan’s largest auditor.

Yoshimi Watanabe, Japan’s financial services minister, said he was dismayed that the incident occurred at a leading stockbroker and that the regulator would “deal strictly” with Nomura.

Nomura’s Mr Watanabe said the company would again review its internal controls, which the bank had tried to strengthen after an insider trading scandal in 2002.

The China Post writes about Chairman Nicky Lu, chariman of Etron Technology Inc., and his wife Liao Shu chuan, a board member, were indicted on insider trading charges, the Taipei District Prosecutors Office said.

Lu and Liao are accused of selling 3 million Etron shares between Feb. 27, 2006, and March 14, 2006, after learning that the company’s gross margin had almost halved in the month to January 2006, according to a faxed statement sent yesterday by Lin Chin-chun, a spokesman for the prosecutors’ office. Lu and Liao haven’t received a copy of the indictment, Chris Liang, a spokeswoman for Etron, said by phone.

The shares were sold by the executives before Hsinchu, Taiwan-based Etron reported gross margin figures for each of the first three months of 2006 in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange in April 2006, the prosecutors said in the statement.

Shares of Etron, a semiconductor designer, fell by the daily limit for three straight days in April 2006. The couple avoided a loss of NT$18.5 million (US$611,207) by selling the stock prior to informing the public, according to the prosecutors’ statement. Lu and his wife will seek to clear their names by presenting evidence to the court after receiving the indictment, Etron said in a filing to the stock exchange yesterday. “The company’s comment remains the same as what we put out last night,” Etron’s Liang said today. Etron fell by the 7 percent daily limit to NT$26.05 at the end of trading in Taipei. The island’s benchmark Taiex index gained 1.6 percent.

Prosecutors searched Etron’s office on June 6, 2007, the company said in a statement to the Taiwan Stock Exchange the next day. Etron will cooperate with the investigation and has provided full disclosure in annual and quarterly reports, it said at that time.

The Age writes that Queensland Gas Company has confirmed the corporate regulator is conducting an investigation into alleged insider trading by the company’s former secretary.The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) is conducting an investigation into the purchase of about 400,000 QGC shares by Mukesh Panchal prior to the announcement of an $8 billion joint venture with BG Group.Mr Panchal was terminated from his position on February 28 after QGC managing director Richard Cottee was informed of the investigation.

“I can confirm that based on the documents in the District Court (of Queensland), Mr Panchal is alleged to have purchased more than  400,000 shares in QGC between 15 January and 1 February 2008,” Mr Cottee said in a statement.

QGC went into a trading halt on Friday, February 1, prior to the BG announcement, with its shares last trading at $3.42. The share price climbed above $4 on Monday, February 4, and has traded as high as $4.67. QGC shares closed three cents higher today at $3.62.

“While I make no comment on his allegedly unlawful activities, I satisfied myself that Mr Panchal had breached our code of conduct and our securities trading policy,” Mr Cottee said. “Unfortunately, the best of intentions and the most rigorous corporate governance framework cannot always prevent unacceptable behaviour.”

CSA is looking forward to see the harmonization of inside information management regulation between Europe, Asia and the US financial markets in order to implement similar rules in all markets. Currently Europe is a step ahead from other markets regarding the strict regulation about insiders and project-specific insider lists, which is a high-priority target for most European regulators.

CSA Partners is providing an effective and semi-automated solutions for implementing a pre-clearance procedure for company executives and insiders to get permission from compliance department before they trade. This procedure is becoming a best-practice in Nordic countries in order to avoid insider trading scandals and investigations such as mentioned above.