Abstract

In recent times, South Africa and other jurisdictions with which it shares corporate commercial legal traditions have upped the tempo on tightening corporate commercial law policy and regulation. One of the ways in which this is done is by introducing rules to regulate conduct of players within the capital financial markets. In South Africa, this is evidenced by the enactment of the Financial Markets Act 19 of 2012. Central to the regulation of financial markets is the prohibition of certain trading practices as clearly set out in s 80 of the Act. One of such prohibited trading practices is the direct or indirect use of or participation in any practice which has created or is likely to have the effect of creating an artificial price for the relevant securities of the company concerned. Since there is no single case in South Africa dealing extensively with the conduct of creating an artificial price for the securities of a company, lessons can be derived from jurisdictions like Australia, which shares corporate commercial legal traditions with South Africa.