Corporate law update
Published on 28th Apr 2015
Preliminary ruling by the ECJ on market abuse
In a matter relating to market abuse, the French Supreme Court asked the European Court of Justice to clarify whether or not only information that makes it possible to anticipate the direction of a change in the prices of the instruments concerned may constitute inside information.
In its decision of 11 March 2015, the ECJ decided that in order to qualify as “information of a precise nature” under the Market Abuse Directive 2003/06/EC, “Article 1(2) of that directive does not require that the information make it possible to determine the direction of change in the prices of the financial instruments concerned. A particular item of information can be used by a reasonable investor as one of the grounds for his investment decision and, accordingly, satisfy the condition laid down in Article 1(2) of that directive, even though it does not make it possible to determine the movement in a given direction of the prices of the financial instruments concerned“.
