The UK
financial markets regulator, the Financial Services Authority (FSA), made clear
in a newsletter published shortly before Christmas that it intends to
investigate a number of suspected cases of insider trading after concluding
that there has been "information leakage" ahead of a small number of
recent merger and acquisition deals.
According
to the FSA’s Market Watch newsletter, the investigation will involve
"looking at a small number of deals where there was a leak of information,"
although details of the specific deals and the companies involved were not
published.
All parties
involved, including law firms and investment banks, will be investigated, says
the FSA. "In this review, we will meet specific ‘deal teams’ to go through
the chronology of deals, undertaking a high-level study of IT systems and
security and reviewing hard-copy filing systems, together with a sample review
of documents," read the newsletter.
London newspapers speculate that four
specific takeover bids are being looked at by the FSA.