The Reform of the EU Market Abuse Law: Revolution or Evolution?

Abstract:     
This paper discusses whether the forthcoming reform of market abuse law, as proposed by the EU Commission in October 2011, may be seen as a ‘revolution’ or a mere ‘evolution’. Section 1 explains the topicality of regulating market abuse (ie insider dealing and market manipulation), both in the US and the EU. Section 2 analyses to what extent the transformation of the current Market Abuse Directive into a Regulation and the new Directive on criminal sanctions may be regarded as ‘revolutionary’. Section 3 deals with the substantive changes which seem to be more ‘evolutionary’ in updating and improving some aspects of the previous law. In section 4 we briefly discuss our main concerns with the proposed reform.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 11

Keywords: market abuse, insider dealing, market manipulation, market abuse directive, securities regulation

JEL Classification: G38, K22, K42

Accepted Paper Series