Information on insider dealing - April 2023

Between 1 January 2022 and 1 January 2023, the FCA detected 25,066 alerts for insider dealing and 14,803 alerts for market manipulation. Alerts represent the initial output of our internal surveillance, which has been calibrated to detect activity for further review.

1. The number of Suspicious Transaction Order Reports (STORs) received by the Market Oversight Division of the FCA in 2022 can be found here. For the period covering 1 January 2023 to 27 February 2023, we received 581 STORs.

2. For the period covering 1 January 2023 to 1 March 2023, the Whistleblowing team received 36 reports with the following categorisations:

• ‘Market manipulation’
• ‘Market abuse’
• ‘Insider dealing’
• ‘Insider trading’.

3. The FCA Supervision Hub does not have specific categories to log contacts from consumers regarding suspected market abuse, and consumers would generally be referred to the relevant page on our website. The relevant page explains how consumers or others who are not a firm, trading venue or a whistleblower, but want to contact the FCA about suspected market abuse, can provide the information direct to the FCA’s market abuse team using a webform.

Notwithstanding, between 1 January 2022 and 9 February 2023, the FCA Consumer Supervision Hub received the following number of reports from consumers:

• 4 categorised with the subject line ‘insider dealing’
• 20 categorised with the subject line ‘market manipulation’
• 82 categorised with the subject line ‘market abuse’

In relation to these, please note:

1. The above search is not exhaustive and will not return potentially relevant reports not containing any of ‘insider dealing’, ‘market manipulation, or ‘market abuse’ in the subject line; and
2. The above categorisations are based on consumer claims; the FCA makes no comment as to whether it suspects market abuse or attempted market abuse.

In respect of the period covering January 2022 to present:

1. The FCA opened 45 investigations where either the primary or secondary issue recorded was insider dealing or market manipulation. Of those cases, 35 remain open.
2. The FCA closed 42 investigations into insider dealing or market manipulation. Of those cases, 25 were discontinued or closed as ‘no further action’.

We do not have any investigations which relate to firms dealing in contracts for difference.

Please note that enforcement represents just one strand of our activity to combat market abuse. We have a strong and active prevention strategy – for example we work with venues and trading firms to strengthen their detection and prevention capability around market manipulation, preventing it at source. In a similar vein, we work with issuers of financial instruments and their advisers to limit access to inside information, which reduces the scope for insider dealing. And we expect firms and venues to have robust systems and controls to identify suspected market abuse and report it to us; our recent enforcement action against Citi, Sigma Brokers and BCG demonstrates we expect firms to take this work seriously. We have an active and robust disruption strategy, closing trading accounts of known insider dealers and working with overseas jurisdictions to make it harder for wrongdoers to access our markets. Finally, we pursue wrongdoers in our markets through a range of tools, from supervisory action through to civil and criminal prosecution; our recent decision to fine and ban three bond traders for manipulating Italian Sovereign bond futures, and our decision in January to charge five people with insider dealing demonstrates a clear and ongoing appetite to pursue serious misconduct in our market with the full range of sanctions at our disposal.