/ 27 August 1999

FIVE INSIDER TRADING PROBES CLOSED

FINANCIAL markets watchdog,the Financial Services Board, said on Wednesday it has closed five of its ongoing insider trading probes due to a lack of evidence. But the FSB, which began operation in January in a drive to clean up the country’s reputation for endemic insider trading, said it has a number of other investigations still under way. The FSB said that it had opened 37 investigations since June, making clear that these enquiries were into share transactions on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange and not into the companies themselves. The watchdog last month made a breakthrough in insider trading regulation when it made the country’s first ever successful case against a transgressor.