Share market participants, CEOs and small-time investors last week gave a resounding ‘NO’ to a Business Times poll on whether the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) should relax its rules on insider trading.
 The poll, pursuant to remarks by Nimal Perera, an influential company director who says he is Sri Lanka’s biggest investor in the stockmarket, at a recent Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) seminar on insider trading, found 95% in favour of the SEC continuing to be strict on insider trading deals (Please visit related story ).
Mr Perera also took umbrage to the Business Times coverage of his comments at the July 19 seminar saying he was misquoted and ‘words’ taken out of context. The gist of Mr Perera’s argument, in a letter to the Business Times, was that “as a concerned investor the point which I was attempting to urge at the panel discussion was that, in the context of generics inherent to the Sri Lankan capital market, it is necessary to look at a home grown solution to tackle the insider trading as opposed to blindly following insider trading regulations of some other territories of totally different features and facets.”
He has also sued K. Vignarajah, a veteran investor and former Chairman of the Ceylon National Chamber of Commerce, who reflected concern over Mr Perera’s comments on insider trading, and wrote about it in the Business Times
Some members in the audience at the seminar, who declined to be named, however confirmed that Mr Perera and to a lesser extent Asanga Seneviratne, another panellist, said -- in the presence of a number of senior officials of the SEC -- that insider trading is inevitable and suggested that the SEC rules against this should be more flexible than rigid. “Is one to construe that they consider themselves above board or beyond the reach of the law?
The title of the seminar was – ‘Insider Trading - Delusion, Illusion or Reality?’ and on round one Mr Perera admitted openly that insider trading is a reality so that was the end of the stated debate. The law for the last 18 years or so has recognised that insider trading is a criminal act, admitting to it in a forum in my opinion is self-incriminating,” one participant said. |
E-mail
