Investors have long bemoaned the culture of insider trading in the Gulf. The region’s markets, especially the decade-old Dubai and Abu Dhabi bourses, have often seen sharp movements in stock prices ahead of important corporate announcements as insiders buy the rumour before selling the fact.
Enforcement against insider trading has been limited. So a decision by the UAE market regulator to ban a prominent businessman for breaking regulations governing the trading of shares in his own company would, on the face of it, appear to be a step in the right direction.
Riad Kamal, the Palestinian chairman of construction company Arabtec, has been banned from trading for six months over a series of three transactions which took place in 2009 when he sold stock in the company he founded 35 years ago during the new-born UAE’s first oil-fuelled construction boom.
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