FSA looks at leaks in takeover bids
The Financial Services Authority, in a bid to crack down on insider dealing, said it was speaking to all parties involved in a small number of takeover deals where a leak of information occurred.
The results of the review were expected to be released in early 2007, the FSA said in a newsletter published on its website on Monday.
Four takeover bids announced in the past year were the focus of the project, the Guardian, the Financial Times and the Independent reported on Tuesday. The FSA was not immediately available to comment on this figure.
The work "involves looking at a small number of deals where there was a leak of information," according to the FSA's Market Watch newsletter.
"We are holding detailed discussions with all the key parties to those deals the advisers, lawyers, PR firms, printers, issuers, debt and equity providers," it said. These deals would be compared with others where there was no leak of information.
The FSA said earlier this year it detected unusual share price moves ahead of regulatory announcements a sign of "informed trading" in about one third of takeover announcements in 2004.
In addition, the watchdog already knew of 266 suspicious trades that took place between July 2005 and October 2006, including 255 related to insider trading, the Guardian said.
"We consider that there are too many leaks of information about these deals," Sally Dewar, director of the FSA's markets division, wrote in the newsletter. "We aim to increase our understanding of how information is controlled and consider ways to tighten the flow of information through discussions with a range of firms involved in such deals."
In three of the takeovers under review, the firms involved were forced to issue an announcement before the deal had been agreed because information had leaked out, the FT reported.
The FSA, which acknowledged that M&A deals were often complex and involved a large number of people, said it wanted to produce examples of good practice of controls and procedures.
|
|
