MÜLLER SEIDEL VOS Rechtsanwälte PartGmbB
Insider offences at the Berenberg Bank?
Insider offences at the Berenberg Bank? Cologne, 4 March 2019 – The State Criminal Police Office has searched the offices of Berenberg Bank in Hamburg for media reports. There was suspicion of insider trading. A shareholder of Berenberg Bank is alleged to have informed a person close to him and an entrepreneur of the imminent sale of Hapag Lloyd shares by TUI. Daniel Vos, a lawyer specialising in banking and capital market law from Cologne, explains what this allegation is all about. What is insider law about? Insider law ensures fairness on the stock markets. Persons, who have a knowledge projection opposite the general public, may not use this. The starting blocks in the race for the best price forecast are therefore aligned along a single line. Where is insider law regulated? In the past, insider trading law was an integral part of the German Securities Trading Act. Since summer 2016, we have had a uniform European regulatory framework in the form of the Market Abuse Ordinance. How is unfair insider trading prevented? Like the Securities Trading Act, the ordinance uses leverage at several points: On the one hand, insider trading is prohibited. Anyone who has insider information may not use it for share transactions. On the other hand, insider information may not be unlawfully disclosed and companies are obliged to disclose such information as soon as possible. The disclosure of such information must therefore be rapid and organised to ensure equal treatment of all capital market participants. This is accompanied by the obligation to keep so-called insider lists. In this way, it is always possible to track who had access to relevant information at what time. Do these regulations work? The reports of the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority can, of course, only show the number of suspected cases identified. Nobody therefore knows how many cases remain undetected. The fact that numerous suspected cases detected in the near future ultimately do not lead to a conviction may indicate a high degree of sensitivity in investigations. Where are the prosecutors’ difficulties? What distinguishes a good defence? As always, the devil is in the details of the individual case. Good defence lawyers have to offer capital market law expertise here. In the current case of the Berenberg Bank, for example, it will be a decisive question whether the forthcoming sale of shares had not already been announced sufficiently clearly. Then this transaction was publicly known and we no longer have any insider information – the investigation procedure then collapses. Often the evaluation of the compliance measures taken also plays a role. What penalties are imminent? The consequences of a violation are not uniform throughout Europe, but are still regulated nationally by the Securities Trading Act. The German law provides for prison sentences of up to five years or fines – a penalty that we are otherwise familiar with from bodily injury or fraud! It is therefore by no means a trivial offence. Such an accusation is to be taken absolutely seriously. Press contact About MÜLLER SEIDEL VOS, Cologne End of Media Release Issuer: MÜLLER SEIDEL VOS Rechtsanwälte PartGmbB Key word(s): Finance
05.03.2019 Dissemination of a Press Release, transmitted by DGAP – a service of EQS Group AG. |