Whilst MAR 1 contains guidance on market abuse, the requirement to submit a suspicious transaction report is set out in SUP 15.10.
Currently SUP 15.10.2 applies to any firm arranging or executing a transaction for a client in a qualifying investment admitted to trading on a prescribed market, a term which will capture exchange-regulated markets such as AIM as well as regulated markets such as the LSE Main Market.
On the other hand SUP 15.10.3, which applies to any investment firm or credit institution, simply refers to suspicions of a transaction involving market abuse. For the record, s118 of FSMA (‘Market abuse’) refers to both qualifying investments and related investments. In the context of market abuse the latter are investments whose price or value is dependent upon the price or value of a qualifying investment (s130A(3)).
The FCA feels that it will improve clarity if the rules are aligned and so propose removing the reference to a ‘qualifying investment admitted to trading on a prescribed market’ from SUP 15.10.2. Furthermore the Regulator believes that this proposal does not increase the scope of SUP 15.10 and so will not affect any previous guidance given or Market Watch articles.
