On 1 February 2019 the Commissioner, Kenneth Haynes, submitted his final report on the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry to the Governor-General of Australia.
Then this happened......
The
New Daily, 5
February 2019:
Last week Josh
Frydenberg “guaranteed” the royal commission’s final report would not leak while the government sat on it for
three days.
About $22 million says
that guarantee wasn’t worth anything.
The welter of news in
Kenneth Hayne’s report has tended to overshadow what appears to be some rather
obvious insider trading.
Someone, somewhere,
somehow received a nod and wink on Monday morning that the banks would actually
come out of the royal commission better than expected.
“Front running” is the
market euphemism for what happened next.
“Any alternate
explanation is fanciful,” a fund manager wrote to me.
“With the banks down a
quarter per cent, some trader looked out the window at 11am and noticed it was
all sunny and cheerful and decided to buy a half billion dollars worth of the
major banks ahead of the report into their own malfeasance. I don’t think so.”
That half-billion plunge
at 11am was worth a quick $22 million profit on Tuesday morning.....
