My coverage of City and financial regulation has always been coloured by my first job at a news agency called Citycall. Run by BT, at the time of the Big Bang Citycall had to join one of the self regulatory organisations, Lautro, Fimbra, IMRO I can’t remember which. In time I became the designated regulatory officer at Citycall, which involved little more than asking reporters what shares they owned so they couldn’t be accused of insider dealing. There was, of course, no way of checking what they did own, the system was a joke.
The market was rife with insider dealing and shady practises, (I know, I was offered and turned down serious cash for inside information). Many very average people made millions and bought Porches as foreign money poured in, no questions asked. Scandal after scandal failed to bring about proper changes to the rules and twenty years later light touch regulation lead to the credit crunch and the near collapse of the country’s banking system. The red brace brigade, who it turned out weren’t masters of the universe, kept their millions and the tax payer forked out hundreds of billions to keep the system afloat.
The UK has now reached an agreement with the EU on how to start splitting away financial services from EU rules, the UK isn’t doing that to increase regulation; it is only too keen to weaken the rules again. Deregulation will doubtless bring even more dodgy money and risk taking to London and in huge amounts. Porsche sales will boom, never a good sign, and somewhere down the line it will all start again. It is what is called a shallow learning curve.
https://jonty.substack.com/
At the time that you talk of insider trading you might be surprised to hear the Market Supervision teams knew who the Insider traders were extremely well and contrary to what you were led to believe knew exactly who was doing what, the time of their trades and who was whose friend. I suspect insider traders at that time got the "we are on to you" sort of speech, in the hope they stopped rather than risk reputational shredding through the legal system. Even then with the software available at that time it was very easy to spot market movements that were out of the ordinary in terms of prices, volumes, before a press announcement and who was the broker.
I'm delighted to note from your write up most insider traders could only afford porches and not porsches. :) I wasn't one of your insiders, I was friends with the folks chasing them who were office neighbours. .