SECP restructures dept to increase monitoring

Barrage of actions taken to protect investor interest.

ISLAMABAD: The Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) has restructured and reinforced its market surveillance and special initiatives department in order to strengthen its monitoring of trading activity at the exchanges.

According to the SECP, stringent measures will be adopted to ensure integrity and fairness in trading activities and to identify abusive, manipulative and irregular practices.

With additional resources in place, the department now consists of three separate wings, including market surveillance, market watch and development wing, along with a media and research wing.

“The reorganisation of the market surveillance department has enhanced the SECP’s capacity and effectiveness for monitoring and surveillance of capital markets, not just through monitoring trading activity but monitoring of the entire spectrum, including observing company announcements, index movements, media reports, rumours and speculation,” said the commission.

This emphasis on the protection of investor interests and curtailing market abuse has resulted in 30 actions this year. This represents over 50% of the total actions taken the previous year and almost equals the number of actions taken the year before.

In this regard, nine actions have been taken on insider trading/front running, two orders have been passed under Section 22 of the 1969 Securities and Exchange Ordinance (SEO), four restricting orders have been passed under the SEO and 15 warning letters were sent to market participants.

Three orders were passed against KATS operators of three brokerage houses for disclosing non-public material information to their close relatives pertaining to the trading orders of the clients of the brokerage house whose trades were executed through the terminals allocated to them.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 13^th,  2015.

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