Adrian Ash, 29 Jan ’08
The FSA… has just got round to bringing its first ever criminal case for insider dealing – despite being the statutory prosecutor for insider dealing since 2000.
“That’s a long while,” as Sara George of Allen & Overy noted to the Financial Times. Not least because the regulator itself says insider dealing is “rife” in the City of London, affecting almost 24% of takeover and merger announcements in 2005 – utterly unchanged from the proportion subject to insider dealing in 2000, the year the FSA became responsible for preventing it.
As for fines, the FSA’s preferred slap on the wrist, the largest single censure of a retail finance firm to date was this month’s £1 million fine (less than $2m) of HFC Bank for giving “unsuitable insurance advice”. HFC is part of the HSBC group. The parent’s latest interim report showed that it earned that much – pre-tax – every 36 minutes.
The FSA’s largest fine all told was £17 million ($33m) charged to Royal Dutch Shell for lying about its crude oil reserves in July 2004. The oil giant’s net income at the time was £24m per day.
For the full article go to…
http://goldnews.bullionvault.com/socgen_jerome_kerviel_banking_scandal_fsa_regulators_012920084
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