Archive for April 18th 2012

On camera – televising criminal proceedings

Television cameras were today allowed to record the sentencing of David Gilroy in the High Court in Edinburgh. This is the first time that sentencing in a UK court has been filmed for broadcast the same day – normally proceedings in Scotland are only occasionally filmed for documentaries to be broadcast weeks or months later and are heavily edited by lawyers involved in the case. Filming in most English courts has been banned since 1925.

Insider dealing v insider trading

This month the headline grabbing case for the FSA was that of Ian Hannam, the former banker at JP Morgan, who was fined £450,000 for relaying inside information about his client Heritage Oil to a prospective client in 2008. Hannam’s case is one of several, including David Einhorn and Nicholas Kyprios, which over the course of the last few months alone have been publically paraded by the FSA in order to demonstrate their stringent enforcement policy. Whilst those who work in the finance and banking sector can be left in little doubt that the FSA will vigorously pursue individuals who they believe may have engaged in market abuse or insider dealing, the threat in reality is that of a civil penalty rather than a criminal sanction.

Although the FSA has undoubtedly stepped up several gears in respect of its criminal prosecution of insider dealing, this increased effort has yet to be rewarded with the level of convictions that are being enjoyed by prosecutors in the US. Since 2009 the US Attorney’s Offices in New York alone have prosecuted 66 people for insider trading and have obtained 57 convictions and guilty pleas. In contrast, as of February 2012, the FSA had secured only 11 convictions.