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The purpose of this paper is to provide an analysis of the market abuse regulation to determine whether the general assumption that it has made little difference to the pre-existing UK law on market abuse is accurate. In particular, the potential impact on compliance and behaviour in financial services firms and those who potentially receive inside information is considered.

The methodology adopted is a combination of critical analysis and black letter law utilised to determine the content and potential impact of the market abuse regulation. A process of discovery made more important by the limited assistance given by the European Securities and Markets Authority and the Financial Conduct Authority in terms of the guidance and definitions they have provided.

The new Regulation has a wider definition of insider dealing than under the previous law, has a wider application in terms of the financial instruments that it applies to, has triggered significant new compliance and disclosure requirements and it also extends the law to new markets.

There are limitations in that the relevant regulatory bodies, ESMA and the FCA have made little effort to clarify how they interpret the new Regulation. This is a serious problem because in the case of the FCA, their view will impact on the approach they will take in future enforcement actions.

This paper provides the first real analysis of the market abuse regulation’s effect and shows that, if carefully analysed in context, it has a significant impact on firms in the financial services sector and those engaged in activities which can put them in receipt of inside information. It will cause an increase in relevant compliance and has significant cost implications for affected firms.

This is not really relevant here. There will be necessary changes to compliance procedures.

The originality stems from the fact that there appears to be little else published which has engaged in a sustained analysis of the impact and effect of the EU market abuse regulation on the UK’s financial markets and those other firms who receive inside information.

To introduce and summarize the key features of market‐misconduct‐related offenses in the UK with a particular focus on insider dealing.

Provides a detailed overview of: the market abuse regime of the UK's financial regulator, the Financial Services Authority (FSA),which implements the EC Market Abuse Directive; other regulatory powers used by the FSA in cases of market misconduct; and relevant criminal law offenses.

The FSA is given a broad range of powers that enable it to bring criminal or regulatory proceedings in the UK for market misconduct. The FSA's powers have thus far been used primarily within the regulatory framework, but the FSA has said that it will be prepared to pursue certain cases through the criminal courts where behavior justifies criminal rather than regulatory action. Although the two regimes are similar, there are some differences and both regimes must therefore be considered when analyzing compliance requirements or whether market misconduct has occurred.

This paper is an important reference for publicly traded issuers, those who recommend investments or investment strategies, and their advisors where any investment activity is carried on with the UK or involves UK markets.

To provide a practical look at the European Union Market Abuse Regulation (Regulation EU No. 596/2014) (“MAR”) and some of its uncertainties, particularly the issue of its wide reaching jurisdictional scope.

The article takes a three pillar approach covering the following: a brief discursive overview of MAR, consideration of some of its uncertainties and key areas of controversy, and a detailed consideration of the jurisdictional scope of MAR.

Many questions and considerations about MAR remain, particularly those regarding how the investment recommendations requirements will be met in practice, most notably in respect of sales notes. Further, additional extensive record keeping obligations and prescriptive market soundings procedures are now expected of firms in order to show the legitimacy of their activities. In addition, the geographical scope of MAR is wide and all encompassing. Whilst its market manipulation, improper disclosure and insider dealing provisions must undoubtedly be adhered to worldwide, it remains to be seen how far the conduct requirements included in MAR will be implemented by non EU firms.

Consolidation and detailed consideration of the most common questions being asked in the market by market participants and issuers on The Market Abuse Regulation in the run up to its implementation. Practical guidance from experienced financial regulatory lawyers.

Located within growing scholarly interest in linking the global financial crisis with revelations of financial crime, this piece utilises Roman Tomasic's suggestion that the financial crisis has marked something of a turning point in regulatory responses to financial crime worldwide. Tomasic attributes this to changing attitudes towards light-touch regulation and risk assessment, and the demand for existing agencies to be replaced with new tougher authorities. In the UK, this can be illustrated by the imminent replacement of the FSA with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Discussion of the FSA's financial crime fighting activity is an important forecast for the likely directional focus of the FCA in this regard. A focus only on “market abuse” enforcement within this arises on account of the effects for financial systems widely attributed to this activity, with threats to systemic stability being a hallmark of the 2007-2008 financial crisis. This methodology also encourages coherence in focus and management of sources within the article. Market abuse enforcement provides a lens for exploring the FSA's adoption of the philosophy and ethos of “credible deterrence”, and FCA commitment to retain it, and ultimately for applying the hypothesis of the “haphazard pursuit of financial crime” to pre-crisis criminal enforcement relating to financial crime undertaken by the FSA.

The FSA and FCA appear acutely aware that the financial crisis has marked something of a turning point for the enforcement of financial crime, and for signalling changes in approach, for the reasons explored by Tomasic. Tomasic correctly identifies factors encouraging a range of undesirable practices pre-crisis, and ones signalling tougher and more sustained attention being paid to financial crime henceforth. It is noted that, pre-crisis, the FSA's pursuit of criminal enforcement of market abuse was conscious, comprehensively resourced, well publicised, and actually extensive.

This exploration of the FSA's criminal enforcement of market abuse given the Authority's own perceptions that it was not, and could never be, a “mainstream” criminal prosecutor considers the likely lasting legacy of this determined pursuit, when domestic politics and pan-European policies suggested against this. This is likely to be enormously valuable as the FCA undertakes this task in a domestic arena which is markedly in contrast from this, and where European agendas are pushing in favour of criminal enforcement, with the “more Europe, or less” debate providing a further dimension of interest.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effectiveness of financial market rules in protecting minorities.

The study compares two alternative disclosure rules on insider trading, namely, the market abuse directive (Directive 2004/72/EC), inspired from the United State (US) insider trading regulation enacted by the Sarbanes–Oxley act and the transparency directive enacted by the European (Directive 2004/109/EC) dealing with the crossing of the shareholding threshold. To investigate which one is more effective in signaling reserved information, and thus in reducing information asymmetry, the authors run an event study on the French context, where both regulations are adopted. The data were hand collected from the French stock exchange securities commissions during the two years following the implementation of the two regulations in 2004. The final sample consists of 363 insiders trading and 35 crossing shareholding thresholds for 10 top French firms during the period 2006-2007.

The results show that the French market reacts significantly to insider trading, but poorly to the crossing shareholding thresholds. Abnormal returns are greater after insider purchases than after crossing up thresholds. These findings support the superiority of the insider disclosure regulation, as it has better information content and provides better protection to minorities.

The study contributes to the corporate governance literature by comparing two disclosure-trading policies. The authors conclude that regulation of disclosure of insider trading along the lines of US disclosure rules is more informative to the market and thus more relevant and important than disclosure of cross-threshold trades.

The study contributes to the corporate governance literature by comparing two disclosure-trading policies. The authors conclude that regulation of disclosure of insider trading along the lines of US disclosure rules is more informative to the market and thus more relevant and important than disclosure of cross-threshold trades. This finding can be helpful for the securities lawmakers and regulators in the process of insider trading law enforcement.

Previous researchers approached the question of insider trading focusing on the identity of insiders. In the research, the authors address the question from another perspective, namely, the crossing of thresholds. Another methodological contribution of the study is the use of a market model that incorporates GARCH (generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedastic) effect and time-varying systematic risk parameter (β), which is recommended to tackle the classical event study problem of detecting the exact timing of the event.

The purpose of this paper is to ascertain the efficacy of Financial Services and Markets Act (FMSA) (2000) in deterring illegal insider trading in target companies around the time of a merger and aquisition announcement.

The author uses an event study to measure the cumulative average abnormal returns (CAARs) around both the announcement and rumour date for a sample of UK takeovers between 2001 and 2010.

Statistically significant CAARs prior to the event date are observed across the sample.

It is not possible to link unknown instances of illegal insider trading with pre takeover residuals, therefore explaining the residuals remains a deductive process.

Pre-event abnormal returns may indicate that trading on material nonpublic information is still a contributory factor in the run-up proportion of takeover premiums.

This draws a question over the efficacy of the regulatory system.

This study provides evidence which points to insider trading activity ahead of Mergers in a post FMSA 200 UK context.

This paper summarises the FSA's enforcement action taken to date under the market abuse regime and considers how the implementation of the Market Abuse Directive (‘MAD’) will affect the work of city compliance officers. In particular, this paper focuses on the new requirement for the regulated sector to make suspicious transaction reports in respect of market abusive behaviour as well as considering how the newly revamped market abuse regime will sit alongside the criminal offence of insider dealing.

This article purports to show that an adequate anti-money laundering (AML) regime must be integrated into the carbon emissions market industry in order for it to function effectively, meet its intended goals, and prevent criminals from developing innovative methods to take advantage of particular vulnerabilities this unique market type has created.

This article discusses the formation of the international carbon emissions marketplace. It posits that critical to the formation and effective operation of any carbon emissions trading market is the simultaneous coexistence of an AML regime preventing criminals from taking advantage of legislative deficiencies. Lastly, the article formulates and analyzes emerging criminal typology threats to which current, developing, and future carbon emissions markets are and will be subject.

Under the EU ETS, effective AML safeguards were not initially included in the implementation and formation of the EU's carbon emissions trading market, subjecting it to numerous threats and abuses from criminals. The lack of an effective AML regime has resulted in novel and unique criminal typology threats that are currently emerging and need to be addressed to prevent abuses in new and existing carbon emissions trading markets.

The EU has recently started addressing its lack of effective AML safeguards in its carbon emissions trading market. As such, the adequacy of legislative developments needs to be examined over time. Additionally, because many of the emerging criminal typologies identified are based on recent and limited data, further research on the extent of criminality that is actually occurring is recommended.

Because emerging criminal typology threats in carbon emissions trading markets has not been researched at the scholarly level, this article is unique and has substantial value to the AML community.

Analysis of the guidelines on investment recommendations (“Guidelines”) issued by the Italian Securities and Exchange Commission (“CONSOB”) on the application of the EU Regulation No. 596/2014, the Market Abuse Regulation (“MAR”).

This article focuses on the Guidelines issued with the aim to facilitate the identification of unlawful conducts of firms and individuals disseminating investment recommendations on financial instruments or issuers. In particular, the definition of investment recommendations as per MAR, the duties of persons providing such information and also the investigative powers conferred to CONSOB in order to prevent the dissemination of false or misleading information to the public are examined in detail.

The Guidelines are an important interpretative tool for firms and individuals providing investment recommendations on financial instruments or issuers. They further determine the duties deriving from MAR and the investigative powers attributed to CONSOB.

This article provides useful information on MAR and practical guidance on the applicability of this regulation to persons and firms providing investment recommendations on financial instruments or issuers.

This paper aims to analyze the processing of complaints against investment advisors and Member firms through the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC) enforcement system between 2009 and 2016. The paper used the misconduct funnel to show the number of complaints that are “funneled in,” and how these complaints are subsequently “funneled out” and “funneled away” at the investigation and prosecution stages of IIROC enforcement system.

The paper uses data from IIROC enforcement annual reports from 2009 to 2016. A combination of descriptive statistics and correlation matrices was used to analyze the data.

The findings indicate that while IIROC “funneled in” more complaints, a significant proportion of complaints were “funneled out” of its enforcement system and funneled “away” from the criminal justice system. Fines imposed were often not collected from individual offenders. IIROC, it seems, is ineffective in handling the more serious and systematic industry problems.

It is hard not to see the findings from this study being used by the provincial securities commissions and the federal government to support the call for a national securities regulator in Canada.

This is the first study of its kind to systematically analyze the enforcement performance of IIROC.