China Arrests Bosera’s Ex-Fund Manager Ma Le on Suspected Insider Trading in front-running of fund clients

September 4, 2013 Leave a comment

September 3, 2013, 7:04 a.m. ET

China Arrests Ex-Fund Manager on Suspected Insider Trading

Bosera Fund Management: Activities Were Ma Le’s ‘Personal Actions’

BEIJING—China has arrested a former manager with a major securities fund-management company on suspicion of insider trading, the nation’s legal supervisory body said Tuesday. Ma Le, a former fund manager at Bosera Fund Management, has been arrested on suspected front-running of fund clients, the Shenzhen People’s Procuratorate said in a statement on its website. Front-running, a form of trading on privileged information, entails purchases of securities by a broker or fund manager for resale to clients—or the fund itself—at a profit. The procuratorate is responsible for criminal investigations and prosecutions.The statement said that between March 2011 and May 2013 Mr. Ma made a profit of almost 20 million yuan ($3.3 million) by buying shares with nonpublic information through accounts of his friends and relatives but controlled by him.

Mr. Ma couldn’t be reached for comment. An official at Bosera said Tuesday that the suspected activities were Mr. Ma’s “personal actions.” The country’s securities regulator said on Aug. 2 it had started an investigation into Mr. Ma’s suspected insider-trading activities.

The Shenzhen-based fund company released a statement in early August saying that although Mr. Ma resigned in June, the case posed a challenge to the fund’s operations and it has since stepped up supervision under its risk-management system.

On Friday, the China Securities Regulatory Commission slapped an $86 million fineon major brokerage Everbright Securities Co. The regulator alleged the Chinese brokerage firm engaged in insider trading and provided misleading information after it made a massive trading error in August. The regulator also barred Everbright Securities from proprietary trading in stocks and derivatives and banned four senior executives of the company from the securities industry for life.

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