Regulator to co-op in Everbright suit

The Chinese securities watchdog will submit evidence and cooperate with an investigation to determine whether its recent ruling on insider trading should be reversed.

“The China Securities Regulatory Commission created the rule based on facts, and we respect supervision from the court,” said Deng Ge, a spokesman for the CSRC, at a weekly briefing on Friday.

On Tuesday, Beijing No 1 Intermediate People's Court accepted the case of Yang Jianbo, former general manager of the strategy department of Everbright Securities Co, who filed a lawsuit against the CSRC protesting the punishment he received.

Yang and three colleagues were banned for life from the securities industry and fined 600,000 yuan ($99,000) each by the commission in August after an investigation determined they had engaged in insider trading.

“It is Yang's right to seek legal proceedings, and it's the CSRC's obligation to accept strict supervision,” said Deng.

He added that the commission had not received a notice from the court requiring a response, but it would cooperate with the investigation by handing over materials to support its ruling.

The commission found that after a computer malfunction during morning trading on Aug 16, which gave Everbright a 7.27 billion yuan long position on a commonly traded fund, Yang and his colleagues committed insider trading by partially unwinding that position in afternoon trading without properly disclosing the original trading error.

Yang claims the existence of a trading error doesn't qualify as insider information and that subsequent trades designed to unwind them were in line with the unit's normal hedging strategy, not an exceptional response to the mistaken orders.