I have talked about worrying signs that insider trading is back with a vengeance here, here and here. Basically the combination of globalisation, cash sloshing into liquid, buoyant markets and technology are bringing it back big time.
What makes it more alarming now is that the big investment bankers, analysts and executives are in on this. This week, The Wall Street Journal's Dennis Berman summed it up best:
"We have entered a Golden Age of insider trading, an era of expanding outlets for information and lightly regulated venues for trading on it. The size and complexity of private-equity deals makes it a wonder when traders don't catch word of a deal before it is announced … While the Securities and Exchange Commission has hauled up the occasional rogue for a photo-op, these players are only minor at best. Amid the flashbulbs, the agency and the press have failed to get to the essential question: Are there broad, institutionwide abuses going on, helping information get repeatedly funneled from Wall Street's Deal Machine to its friends in the hedge-fund world and beyond?
"There are all sorts of ways to do this. A bank trading desk may let a hedge fund know that the bank put a company on its no-trading list, implying a deal may be in the works. Someone at a private-equity fund – which are constantly bombarded with information from banks – tips off a friend on a deal in which he has no intention of taking part. Or a bank lining up financing ends up on the doorstep of a hedge fund, where the firm might take the information and run with it."
As Berman says, with so many players obsessively monitoring information, the "tent" of confidentiality is starting to get very crowded. And the more people inside that tent, the harder it will be to keep a secret.
The market for swaps, private contracts between two parties and only traded by the most sophisticated players like hedge funds, banks and insurers, is the key. But the problem is that it isn't clear that the Securities and Exchange Commission has any jurisdiction over them.
Regulators say that the hard part is identifying which individuals have what bits of information that are both material and non-public. And those people usually know how to stay ahead of the law.
"People who plan these trades are many things. They're evil, they're cheaters, but they're not usually stupid. So they figure out how they're going to mask what they're doing,'' former SEC chairman Harvey Pitt told Bloomberg.
Of course, marketing communicators, PRs, printers and Ad men often get advance word on imminent corporate moves, too, L. Remember Margot McKay:
http://www.prdisasters.com/?p=142