Finma: first ban for people outside banking sector

Switzerland's financial markets authority said Friday that it has taken action in two separate cases of insider trading and market manipulation, seizing millions of Swiss francs (dollars) of illegal profits and banning three traders from the industry.

The authority, FINMA, said 1.4 million francs in ill-gotten profits were seized from a former corporate board member who "repeatedly and systematically flouted the ban on using non-public information" to trade in shares of premier Swiss companies between 2013 and 2016.

“The insider trading case is the first of its kind in which FINMA has sanctioned an individual for regulatory breaches who was not employed by a FINMA-supervised institution,” the supervisor said in a statement on Friday.

FINMA did not specify the companies or individuals involved, citing legal restrictions, and said the Swiss attorney-general's office has started criminal proceedings. 

The other case involved a small proprietary trading company that was operating without a license and altered the market by making large orders in Swiss "blue-chip shares" that were not executed between 2011 and 2015, FINMA said, adding in the statement that investigation looked at 300 cases involving "several dozen" companies.

Finma banned three traders from working in securities trading for six and eight years, and banned them from working in management at financial firms for at least four years. The firm went into liquidation in 2015 after was found to be operating without a license.