The Acting Minister of Commerce, Trevor Mallard, today announced the scope of the government’s proposed review into insider trading regulation in New Zealand.

“There are two issues which I see as crucial to this review," he said.

"First of all the problem of detection of insider trading and secondly the enforcement of current insider trading provisions.

"Effectively dealing with these problems is fundamental to ensuring the efficacy of our insider trading regime and goes some way to achieving government’s aim of improving confidence in the sharemarket.

“In addition to these issues we will be looking at the option of New Zealand adopting both criminal and civil liability for insider trading breaches.

"A public discussion document outlining potential options for dealing with the issues of detection and enforcement will be released in August this year.

"At that time, the public will be invited to make comment on the proposed options.

“I expect that government will make decisions on these issues early next year,” Trevor Mallard said.

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