The Insider Dealing (Securities and Regulated Markets) Order 2023

The Insider Dealing (Securities and Regulated Markets) Order 2023 was recently published on legislation.gov.uk, the official website of the UK government for publicizing legal documents. The order provides supplementary provisions for the Criminal Justice Act 1993, which – among other things – makes insider dealing a criminal offense in UK, equivalent to the civil offense provisions set out in UK’s retained Market Abuse Regulation (UK MAR) with respect to insider dealing.
Specifically, the new order
– specifies the conditions for securities to fall within the scope of the Criminal Justice Act (e.g. it must be listed on either of the various named stock exchanges, for instance the NYSE, the NASDAQ, or be traded on multilateral trading facilities) and
– specifies what is considered to be a „regulated market“ for purposes of the Act, including the „regulated market“ of the UK.
The order also redefines the meaning of „securities“ for purposes of the Act to align with existing rules in the retained MAR (modifications to Schedule 2 of the Act). Finally, the order revokes a number of previous Insider Dealing (Securities and Regulated Markets) Orders which are outdated and shall no longer apply.
The key purpose of the order is to align terminology and applicability of criminal offense proceedings with those of civil offense proceedings as far as insider dealing is concerned.