Seven 11 insider trading

[maewang99]

the Thai stock market story du jour is a Thai SEC fine for insider trading against Seven 11 execs on the 2013 Makro deal. this is pretty good stuff. if they keep taking up things like this.

but a question I still can't get an answer to, so many years now, how is it that the bigger issue, so it seems until someone tells me where I am wrong, of insider trading is that all anyone has to do is use a non-Thai broker or bank... instead of a Thai bank or broker..... and their identity is never routinely disclosed to anyone in Thailand, acting as intermediaries, and any and all Thai securities held are done so using the name of a nominee... without even for the asking... and so you have things like PTT having comparably almost no 59-2 reports filed on it's shares..... but MINOR International with enough reports to go from here to the moon because it's top exec is a do it by the book American-Thai.. or so it seems to me until shown otherwise. I haven't looked at the 59-2 reports for 2 years or so but this was quite true and accurate from what I saw 3 years and going back to 2003.

I don't get it. we are in a computer age where every fraction of a bond or stock certificate's beneficial ownership is known and recorded meticulously, in "real time", we are even on the verge of a "cashless society" in which big brother will know everytime you go shopping or even get a fancy haircut.. which is cool... I guess... and yet they won't enforce something as basic as not using nominees for regulated securities holdings.

it's not mysterious at all if you just assume something really awful about how the world's stock markets really work and that most folks therefore fall into either one of 2 categories (1) folks using this feature and don't want it to end (2) I know nothing, I don't see anything, I don't hear anything.. Sergeant Schultz category).

for those who somehow don't understand this or don't believe it, I hold Thai shares in a trust fund and I know exactly who my bank's Thai intermediary is and the name of my nominee.. and it ain't in my name at all. I also know that at least up to a few years ago, opening a bank account in the USA, even for retail walkin customers, does not involve much more than a drivers license and a local address: with or without FATCA reciprocity in reporting flows, that is one heck of a nice privilege for those who can take advantage of it, with almost no effort at all involved in it.

the only penalty is the tax regime, but most of us don't put taxes at the top of most of our lists of how and when to hold securities.

Edited December 3, 2015 by maewang99