An Australian expert in market manipulation will give evidence that none of the trades identified by the Financial Markets Authority in its case against Milford Asset Management portfolio manager Mark Warminger created a false or misleading appearance in
An Australian expert in market manipulation will give evidence that none of the trades identified by the Financial Markets Authority in its case against Milford Asset Management portfolio manager Mark Warminger created a false or misleading appearance in the market.
Mr Warminger's lawyer Marc Corlett QC, in his opening defence at the High Court in Auckland today, said Professor Michael Aitkin, a professor of ICT strategy at Sydney's Macquarie University and one of the world's leading experts in market manipulation, will give evidence on behalf of Mr Warminger.
After considering all 10 courses of action the FMA has alleged against Mr Warminger, Professor Aitkin concluded there was not a single instance where the fund manager's trading between December 2013 and August 2014 breached securities law by creating a false or misleading appearance.
Professor Aitkin has a particular interest in the design and implementation of real-time market surveillance systems to identify prohibited trading behaviours such as insider trading and market manipulation and has designed the SMARTS system in use in more than 50 national stock exchanges worldwide.
The case against Mr Warminger is the first market manipulation case in New Zealand to go to trial.
Warminger, who has been on extended leave from the fund management firm since last year, is accused of misusing his privileged position with an institutional investor by placing trades in stocks in one direction to move the price so he could later transact significant off-market sales, known as cross-trading, at a greater profit. He's also accused of placing trades in companies to set artificial prices.
Mr Corlett said Aitkin's evidence would compare with that of the FMA's own experts - one an analyst and another a trader - "who think they can divine from the trade data, a handful of emails, and the timing of some telephone calls, a malevolent intention behind Mr Warminger's trading on 10 occasions."
TCurrently, the court is now considering an interlocutory application for discovery of documents from the defendant which is opposed by his lawyers, the content of which has been placed under suppression orders by Chief High Court judge Geoffrey Venning.
(BusinessDesk)
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