Financial Regulatory Forum

By Nick Paraskeva, Complinet contributor

NEW YORK, Feb. 18, (Complinet)  - The Securities and Exchange Commission market abuse unit is using new approaches to better identify insider trading and abusive conduct by market professionals. Unit Chief Daniel M Hawke said the SEC is using a trader-based approach to look for patterns across groups of people, such as related trades across different products and markets by a single trader or connected group of traders. The new approach has given the SEC a greater ability to detect relationships among traders, and bring cases against large trading networks.

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By Matthew Goldstein

PHILADELPHIA, Feb 19 (Reuters) – An office building that sits atop an upscale shopping mall in downtown Philadelphia is not the sort of place that would ordinarily strike fear into the hearts of bad guys on Wall Street.

But that is home turf for the little-known regulator who has built a better mousetrap: an increasingly sophisticated computer database which is already helping the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission catch insider traders.

Last month, Daniel Hawke, an energetic, guitar-playing 46-year-old lawyer, was named head of a new task force charged with cracking down on a variety of market abuses.