Posts Tagged ‘market abuse’

We’d like to thank all the participants and speakers for their contribution to an excellent compliance seminar held at Grand Hotel in Stockholm on 3rd of April 2008.

Compliance seminar where speakers from Finansinspektionen, Mannheimer Swartling and CSA Partners covered regulatory requirements, risks and practical challenges faced by the issuer-community under the Market Abuse rules, was attended by over 50 compliance practitioners, senior representatives and other experts from companies listed in Sweden.

Thorough overview regarding issuers’ obligations as well as practical interpretations given by Finansinspektionen was considered highly valuable in view of practical need to have more legal certainty when dealing with applicable rules.

Insight into key legal issues provided by speakers from Mannheimer Swartling was considered highly practical as well as observations and recommendations on the compliance and risk management shared by CSA Partners.

Discussions and questions witnessed the relevance of topics and pointed out number of areas, where further elaboration of best practice and expectations from the part of Finansinspektionen would be highly appreciated in the future.

Further materials:

• Seminar program and speakers
• Download the seminar presentations
• Photos from the seminar

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We started registrations last week for our high-profile compliance seminar in Stockholm on 3rd of April 2008.

The speakers include Swedish Finansinspektionen and leading law firm Mannheimer Swartling. We are sure the program and speeches will be interesting to all Swedish listed companies to plan their compliance activities for current and next years. The seminar is free of charge to listed companies.

There are only 5 last seats available so please look at the program and make your registration today! I hope to see you next Thursday at our morning seminar.

Update (20:30 PM): Thank you all for the registration. All seats for the seminar are booked for now! We will try to arrange additional seats, but we can not guarantee any more seats.

The Times and The Telegraph report that The Financial Services Authority (FSA) of United Kingdom has launched an investigation into potential market abuse after shares in HBOS (Halifax Bank of Scotland) along with several other City financial institutions and the FTSE-100 index plunged sharply today causing chaos on the already volatile market.

HBOS Britain’s biggest mortgage lender reached a 10 year low on rumors and speculation about its liquidity problems and secret emergency meetings with the Central Bank which HBOS and the Bank of England promptly refuted.”Ruthless” traders and speculators are believed to be behind this “modern day bank robbery” with estimated single speculator profits form “short-selling” in excess of £100 million. UK FSA issued a strong statement and launched an extensive criminal investigation along with increased monitoring of the market.

As we wrote last week, we have published the detailed information regarding the compliance seminar on 3rd of April in Stockholm, Grand Hotel. The seminar is about the “Compliance Challenges for Listed Companies under the Market Abuse rules – How to Manage Risks and Prevent Insider Trading?“.

There will be high-profile speakers from Swedish Finansinspektionen, Mira Naumanen, Head of Market Surveillance Unit and Kristoffer Rosell, Legal Counsellor, Insider Registry who will give an overview of issuers obligations (timely disclosure, control of inside information, insider lists, transaction reporting), possible sanctions and FI surveillance plan for 2008. We think the update will be especially interesting for company legal counsels and persons responsible for maintaining insider lists.

Others speakers include well-known lawyer Eva Hägg from law firm Mannheimer Swartling and market abuse regulatory expert Mr. Ahto Kink from CSA Partners.

Please look at the detailed agenda and register yourself to the valuable seminar, free of charge for the listed companies. The seminar will be held in Swedish and English language, followed by a workshop where INSIDeR special purpose compliance software will be demonstrated.

The Financial Supervision Authority (FIN-FSA/RATA) has inspected declarations of insider holdings for the first time since the entry into force of transitional provisions to the Securities Markets Act on 1 January 2006.

– The aim was to pay attention to the maintenance of registers and bring information on all parties required to maintain insider registers up to date, says Jarmo Parkkonen, Deputy Director General of FIN-FSA. Insider registers are important for the preservation of public confidence.

The inspection revealed shortcomings on the part of some persons required to declare insider holdings. These related to delayed filing of basic declarations, declarations of holdings and declarations of changes in holdings. 15 persons subject to the declaration requirement were sanctioned with an administrative fine.

Administrative fine imposed for most serious shortcomings

After a hearing procedure, FIN-FSA imposed an administrative fine on 15 persons subject to the declaration requirement whose basic declaration, declaration of holdings or declaration of changes in holdings to be filed with an insider register had been delayed by over 30 days and who had not voluntarily taken remedial measures immediately after discovery of non-compliance. The administrative fine for a natural person is EUR 250–750.

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On 29 October 2007 the FSA published issue 24 of its Market Watch newsletter in which it elaborates among other topics:

• The results of visits to a number of hedge fund managers to review the controls used to mitigate the risk of market abuse.

• The importance of timetables and insider lists to the FSA when it is conducting enquiries for suspected cases of market abuse, particularly insider trading. Market Watch gives some general pointers on the level of detail the FSA is looking for in timetables and insider lists prepared by firms in case of M&A transactions.

Please download http://www.fsa.gov.uk/pubs/newsletters/mw_newsletter24.pdf for Market Watch Issue 24.

Future121, Finnish reseller of CSA Partners’ compliance products, will organize a second morning seminar about practical solutions to comply with Market Abuse Regime targeted to the compliance personnel of Finnish listed companies.The seminar will be held on 30th of October at Spektri Business Park. For Seminar agenda and registration, please look at the seminar website.