Saudi regulator fines ex-Mobily chairman for insider trading

[DUBAI] Saudi Arabia's market regulator fined the former chairman of the kingdom's second-biggest telecom company for insider trading and ordered his investment firm to pay US$75 million.

Abdulaziz bin Saleh bin Abdullah Alsaghyir, who was the chairman of Etihad Etisalat Co, was fined 100,000 riyals (S$35,149), according to a statement on the Capital Market Authority's website on Monday. He was also banned from managing portfolios, being an investment adviser and working for any listed companies Saudi Arabia.

Abdulaziz Alsaghyir Business Investment Co, of which Alsaghyir is the founder and chairman, was ordered to pay 280 million riyals for the losses it avoided on its investment portfolio as a result of the violated trades.

Mobily, as the mobile phone operator is known, is recovering from accounting irregularities discovered in 2014 that led to more than 1 billion riyals of losses, a $9 billion slump in market value and cost the company its chief executive officer. Over that year, Alsaghyir's investment company sold 9.49 million shares in Mobily, or about two-thirds of its stake.

The shares lost 38 per cent last year, and are down 2.6 per cent this year.

The market regulator started a probe into the company's finances and the activities of some unidentified executives in 2015.

BLOOMBERG