Unfair stock trading cases fall in first quarter

Unfair stock trading cases in South Korea dropped slightly in the first quarter of this year from a year earlier due to tightened market supervision, the financial regulator said Wednesday.

A total of 50 companies and individuals were punished for unfair stock market trading during the January-March period, compared with 55 cases a year earlier, according to the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS).

Unfair trading practices in the stock market include price manipulation, filing false information and using undisclosed inside information for making profits.

The punished entities were reported to prosecutors for investigation, ordered to return illegally earned profits or dealt with regulatory warnings, the FSS said.

In late February, the Financial Services Commission (FSC), the financial decision-making body, suspended the local brokerage unit of Deutsche Bank from derivatives trading for six months for market wrongdoing.

The Deutsche Bank unit was found to have deliberately driven down the key index on Nov. 11 last year by placing massive sell orders in order to pocket profits from its holdings of stock derivatives structured to generate massive returns upon a key index fall. (Yonhap)