NOW LET ME see if I have this straight. If you originate price-sensitive information and tell only a few people, it is a disciplinary matter for the stock exchange. If you receive such information and tell only a few people, it is a matter for the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC).
Do not ask me to make sense of this. The line of demarcation between the exchange and the SFC could not be fuzzier if they were warring states in the Sahara rather than just warring branches of the Hong Kong civil service.
But this is apparently where the line is drawn at the moment. An investment analyst working for Goldman Sachs is reprimanded by the SFC for passing on a profit warning given by New World Development but, where New World Development itself is concerned, the SFC washes its hands.
'You are only watching part one of a story,' said SFC executive director of enforcement Alan Linning. 'Part two is handled by HKEx [Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing].'
Good, Mr Linning, we shall watch for it then ... and watch ... and watch some more, shades of that well-known next instalment of a story, Harry Potter and the Long Wait for Book Five.
Perhaps the exchange will get around at some point to its usual letter of criticism. Meanwhile, may I ask whether anyone who got this privileged information dealt on it to make some money just before New World's share price tanked? If so, this would constitute the much bigger offence of dealing on inside information, would it not?