Market conduct
Supervision
Published: 12 November 2022
Last updated: 11 September 2023
There are a number of prohibitions and obligations concerning how securities market players should act. Such provisions are called conduct rules. The purpose of the conduct rules is to facilitate safe, orderly and effective trading in financial instruments. Failure to comply with the conduct rules is likely to undermine the trust in the securities market, which in turn may jeopardise the securities market's ability to function as an effective source of capital raising.
The market conduct rules are included in Regulation EU No. 596/2014 on market abuse (‘MAR’) which applies in Norway through a reference to the regulation in Section 3-1 of the Securities Trading Act. See relevant laws and regulations here.
Definition of market abuse
MAR defines the following conduct as market abuse and prohibits such conduct:
- Insider dealing
- Market manipulation
- Unlawful disclosure of inside information
In addition, MAR sets out requirements for market participants aimed at, among other things, mitigating the risk of and/or detecting market abuse, as well as promoting greater information symmetry in financial markets, including:
- The obligation to disclose inside information
- The obligation to draw up insider lists
- Obligations related to buy-backs and stabilisation
- Obligations related to market soundings
- Notification obligation for persons discharging managerial responsibilities and persons closely associated with them
- Requirements relating to investment recommendations
- Requirements for the prevention and reporting of suspicious orders and transactions
Decision regarding violation penalty - Short sale
Regulations other than MAR
Further requirements for market participants' behaviour are also set out in other rules than MAR. These concern, inter alia:
- Mandatory disclosure obligation for large positions
- The obligation to report large net short positions and the prohibition against uncovered short sales
Finanstilsynet supervises participants’ behaviour in the securities market, including their compliance with the requirements and obligations set out in the various regulations. For some types of infringements, Finanstilsynet may impose administrative pecuniary sanctions, while other infringements are reported to the police for criminal sanctions. For more information on sanctioning for infringement of the market conduct rules supervised by Finanstilsynet, see here.