Wednesday, April 19, 2017 - UBS penalised for sitting on price-sensitive information

UBS
Source - http://www.cityam.com/263144/ubs-penalised-regulators-waiting-until-morning-release
Where - Switzerland
Cost - 2,000,000 CHF
Business line - Corporate Services

UBS has been fined by the Swiss stock exchange (Six) for failing to share price-sensitive information with the market in 2012.

The bank has received a fine of CHF2m for holding back information about a strategy change involving a scaling back of its investment banking operations.

According to Six, UBS was aware of the information on 29 October 2012, but didn’t inform the market until the morning of 30 October 2012.

“The company was not authorised to postpone the announcement while awaiting the decision of its Board of Directors,” said Six. “A potentially price-sensitive fact already existed prior to the board's decision and the conditions for a postponement of disclosure were no longer given. As UBS Inc. breached this obligation, it violated the rules on ad hoc publicity with conditional intent.”

UBS told Reuters that it “continues to believe that it was and is appropriate to issue an ad hoc announcement only after a final approval of the strategy by the Board of Directors.”

The SIX Swiss Exchange Court of Arbitration reduced the fine imposed by the Sanctions Commission from CHF3m to CHF2m.