Welcome to the Winter 2019 edition of our corporate crime update – our round up of developments in relation to corruption, money laundering, fraud, sanctions and related matters. Our update now covers a number of jurisdictions.
For the full update on each jurisdiction, please click on the name of the jurisdiction below. Below we provide a brief overview of what is covered in each update.
Welcome to the December 2018 edition of our corporate crime update – our round up of developments in relation to corruption, money laundering, fraud, sanctions and related matters.
This month, we would like to wish all of our regular readers a very happy, and hopefully corporate crime free, festive season!
For the full update on each jurisdiction, please click on the name of the jurisdiction below. Continue reading
The Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal (CFA) has recently allowed the Securities and Futures Commission’s (SFC) appeal against the Market Misconduct Tribunal’s (MMT) findings that two former executives of a listed company (ATML), Mr Charles Yiu Hoi Ying and Ms Marian Wong Nam, had not engaged in insider dealing in ATML shares. Continue reading
Welcome to the November 2017 edition of our corporate crime update – our round up of developments in relation to corruption, money laundering, fraud, sanctions and related matters. Our update now covers a number of jurisdictions. For the full update on each jurisdiction, please click on the name of the jurisdiction below. Below we provide a brief overview of what is covered in each update. Continue reading
The Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Market Abuse) Regulations 2016
On 29 June 2016, the Government adopted the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Market Abuse) Regulations 2016 (the "regulations"). This left negligible time for Parliamentary scrutiny before they came into force with the Market Abuse Regulation (EU) 596/2014 ("MAR") on 3 July 2016.
The purpose of the regulations was to amend UK law to ensure its compatibility with MAR, to give effect to those parts of MAR which required implementing legislation, and to ensure it is fully enforceable in the UK. The regulations amend the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (FSMA) and give the Financial Conduct Authority ("FCA") new powers to:
The Market Abuse Regulation (MAR) and the Criminal Sanctions (Market Abuse) Directive came into application in Europe on 3 July 2016. Various outstanding pieces of secondary legislation were published in the Official Journal shortly before then, and further material has emerged since 3 July. ESMA published final form guidelines in relation to delay in disclosure of inside information and market soundings and an updated MAR Q&A document on 13 July, and on 26 July, its final report on Draft Implementing Technical Standards on sanctions and measures under MAR. Further guidelines are expected later this year.
In our latest update, we discuss the implications of these developments, the secondary legislation under MAR and the changes made to the UK regulatory regime to accommodate it. We also look at some recent enforcement actions in a range of different jurisdictions.
Article 2(4) of MAR applies the "prohibitions and requirements" within MAR to behaviour that occurs both within the EU and in a third county. In other words, MAR is intended to have extra-territorial effect, capturing individuals and firms operating outside of the EU.
Under Article 16 of MAR, market operators and investment firms operating a trading venue1, and any person professionally arranging or executing transactions, should have in place arrangements, procedures and systems for the detection and reporting of orders and transactions suspected of constituting insider dealing, market manipulation or attempted insider dealing or market manipulation. The obligations to detect and report market abuse are not limited to investment firms under MiFID; they extend to UCITS management companies, AIF managers and other firms professionally engaged in trading on own account (proprietary traders) such as energy trading companies. Continue reading
With just under 5 weeks to go before the Market Abuse Regulation comes into application across the EU, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) on Monday clarified that the obligations to detect and report market abuse under Article 16(2) of MAR (and the implementing technical standards once they are finalised) apply not just to investment firms under MiFID, but also to UCITS management companies, AIF managers and firms professionally engaged in trading on own account (proprietary traders) such as energy trading companies.
This will be our last quarterly Market Abuse update before 3 July 2016, the date when both the new Market Abuse Regulation and the Criminal Sanctions (Market Abuse) Directive come into application across Europe. Some significant pieces of the regulatory jigsaw have yet to be slotted into place, so we have set out the current state of play in a little more detail. Both pieces of legislation have significant extra-territorial implications: in this briefing we highlight some quirks in the potential application of the criminal regime.
The advent of new regulation has not led to any significant let-up of regulators' enforcement efforts, and this briefing also reviews some recent cases in the UK, the US and Australia.
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