Ziad Bahaa El-Din, the lawyer who heads Egypt’s new Financial Services Authority, says he will seek to enforce insider trading laws that haven’t resulted in a prosecution in several years. The FSA, which was formed on July 1, plans to use existing laws to make companies report material events on time and bolster the role of company audit committees. Bahaa El-Din believes that existing regulations on insider trading are already “very tough” and simply need to be enforced.
Bloomberg reports that disciplinary action by securities regulators in Egypt is rare, with the last such action occurring in 2007. The article emphasizes that any clampdown in Egypt would “increase confidence” among investors. Bahaa El-Din, however, acknowledges that his organization “is so new that he doesn’t yet have a budget to pay employees.”
