Court rejects call to ban hedge fund from market
The Securities and Futures Commission suffered another setback in its legal battle against the US hedge fund Tiger Asia Management and its three senior executives after a Hong Kong court yesterday rejected the watchdog's application to ban them from trading in the local market.
High Court Judge Jonathan Harris ruled the commission's application should be struck out and that the SFC should be responsible for costs.
The SFC has alleged that the US hedge fund and the three executives had committed insider dealing and market manipulation in 2008 and 2009 in trading shares of China Construction Bank and Bank of China.
Judge Harris last month rejected an SFC bid to freeze HK$38.5 million worth of assets belonging to Tiger Asia Management and its three executives. In his written judgment last month, the judge said he rejected the freeze because his court did not have jurisdiction to determine whether the hedge fund and its three executives - founder Bill Hwang Sung-kook, managing director and head of trading Raymond Park, and trader William Tomita - had engaged in insider dealing or market manipulation, as alleged by the SFC.
The SFC then argued that it wanted the court to ban Tiger Asia Management and the three executives from trading in the local markets, a move the judge rejected yesterday.
The SFC has decided to appeal, a spokesman said last night.
'The commission must establish a prima facie case of contravention of a relevant provision,' Judge Harris said in his written judgment yesterday.
'In my view, to read the language of the relevant sections in the manner suggested by the commission is unrealistic, artificial and gives no weight to the impact of other provisions of the ordinance and the regime which, as I explain in my substantive decision, the ordinance establishes,' the judge wrote.
