The start of 2004 has seen the Financial Services Authority (FSA) finally succeed in using the powers conferred on it by the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (FSMA) to crack down on market abuse.
In February, Robert Middlemiss created a small piece of unwanted legal history when he became the first person to be the subject of a financial penalty made final under the civil regime brought in by the FSMA. Middlemiss, the company secretary of the AIM-listed Profile Media Group, sold 70,000 of his company’s shares in April 2002, shortly before it issued a profits warning. By doing so he avoided a loss of £6,825, and the FSA considered this to be sufficiently serious to justify imposing a penalty of £15,000.
