Displaying items by tag: Insider trading

Switzerland: The Swiss Attorney General's office has opened an investigation into possible insider trading in the securities of cement producer Holcim Ltd, the office has said in a statement.

The investigation was first reported by the NZZ am Sonntag newspaper, which said that suspected insider trading took place just before Holcim's announcement in April 2014 of a plan to merge with France's Lafarge. The investigation is probing a possible offence by a 'secondary insider,' not someone with authorised access to insider information, but who obtained such information in an unauthorised way, the Attorney General's office said. The statement gave no further details.

Italy: Officers from Italy's market regulator Consob and the tax police visited the headquarters of Italcementi on 5 November 2014 as part of an investigation into alleged insider trading, sources close to the matter said, according to Reuters.

According to local media, the inspections, which were also carried out at the offices of Italcementi's main shareholder Italmobiliare, concerned a series of measures taken by the Italcementi group in March 2013 in a bid it made for its French unit Ciments Francais.

A spokesman for Italcementi said that the group hoped that the Consob inspections would not reveal deliberate intention to do wrong. "In the opposite case, the group's management will take firm initiatives to safeguard the interests of the company, which would be the injured party."