Ex-Citic Pacific executive guilty of insider trading
Accused avoided losses by selling shares before company's profit warning
A former senior executive of Citic Pacific was convicted yesterday of selling shares in the firm before it issued a profit warning in 2008.
Chui Wing-nin, who was then the firm's assistant director of finance, had pleaded not guilty to two counts of insider trading. He was convicted after an eight-day trial in Eastern Court.
The Securities and Futures Commission said Chui sold 81,000 shares of Citic Pacific on September 9 and 12, 2008, while he had price-sensitive information about losses the firm faced from foreign exchange derivatives contracts before those losses were disclosed to the market.
The state-backed steelmaker and property developer issued the profit warning on October 20, 2008. The SFC estimated the notional loss Chui avoided at HK$1.36 million.
It said Chui had been involved in assessing the impact of the fall in the Australian dollar on some foreign exchange derivatives contracts.
The SFC said that before selling the shares, Chui had learned from his work and e-mails from colleagues that the firm had suffered large losses from bets on the Australian dollar.