That reminded me.

Question 10 in the June ACCA paper F4 (GLO) exam was a 2-parter dealing with the two criminal offences of ‘money laundering’ and ‘insider dealing’. It would appear that the examiner was fairly pleased with the standard of answers on the former, but not the latter.

He commented as follows:

“However, there was some concern as to the insider dealing part of the problem, which raised some concerns and suggests that a full question on that area would have met with much less success (could this be a hint for the future??!!). The essential problem was that candidates seemed to think that insider dealing was just using or revealing information gained from inside a company. That, of course, is completely incorrect and it is not insider dealing unless the purchase or sale of securities is involved.”

Earlier this year the UK financial regulator, the Financial Services Authority brought a successful criminal prosecution against solicitor Christopher McQuoid and his father-in-law James William Melbourne. The facts of the case were that McQuoid discovered that his employer, TTP Communications was about to be taken over by Motorola. Just 2 days before the announcement of the takeover, Melbourne purchased over 150,000 shares in the company.

After the takeover had gone through, Melbourne sold the shares making a profit of around £50,000, half of which he then paid over to McQuoid.

Since this topic was first brought into the syllabus, it has prompted a number of questions in the exam. Will you be well prepared for the next one?