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Rumeurs sur Wall Street: la SEC envisage intervenir

16 juillet, 2008 - 02:59 — via Gouvernance
La SEC envisage intervenir pour sanctionner les intervenants du marché qui disséminent des rumeurs sans fondement dans le but d'influer (à la baisse) sur le cours des titres (voir ici favicon). Voici ce qu'en dit la SEC:
The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that the SEC and other securities regulators will immediately conduct examinations aimed at the prevention of the intentional spread of false information intended to manipulate securities prices. The examinations will be conducted by the SEC's Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations, as well as the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority and New York Stock Exchange Regulation, Inc.

The examinations we are undertaking with FINRA and NYSE Regulation are aimed at ensuring that investors continue to get reliable, accurate information about public companies in the marketplace," said SEC Chairman Christopher Cox. "They will also provide an opportunity to double-check that broker-dealers and investment advisers have appropriate training for their employees and sturdy controls in place to prevent intentionally false information from harming investors."
Cette intervention témoigne de la volonté de la SEC d'endiguer les ventes à découvert opportunistes, comme l'indique l'article du Report on Business intitulé Stock, Lies and the Grapevine Crackdown favicon:

The SEC's move came amid heightened concern that short sellers and hedge funds have been peddling lies about several large financial companies - Bear Stearns Cos. Inc. and Lehman Brothers Inc. among them - in an effort to drive down their stock prices and profit from the resulting slide.

Plusieurs sont toutefois sceptiques face à cette initiative. Dans le ROB, le Professeur John Coffee de Columbia parle de combats contre les moulins-à-vent. Dans Pressed to Act, SEC to Probe False Rumors About Marke (ici favicon: abonnement requis), le Wall Street Journal, de son côté, signale la difficulté des poursuites en matière de manipulation de marché:
Market-manipulation cases are difficult to prove. Traders live and die by information and are constantly talking to one another. It is illegal, however, to knowingly spread false information with the intention of profiting from its dissemination; for example, by shorting a stock and saying the company is in danger of collapse. The problem is tracking down the original source of a rumor and proving that traders knew the information was false when they told others.
Pour ma part, je m'interroge sur l'impact d'une telle intervention sur la production d'information par les intervenants du marché. Non sans rappeler l'intervention ayant limité les activités des analystes financiers, cette intervention pourrait avoir des effets inattendus pour l'efficience informationnelle.