Swiss stock exchange watchdog comes with Iceland experience

Geneva

SWITZERLAND'S newest stock exchange enforcer saw first-hand how a country can be crippled by market fraud. As a fund manager, he lived through the collapse of Iceland's financial sector. Then he was hired by the government to help investigate what led to it. He found that, among other things, Iceland's biggest banks had improperly inflated their share prices to counter the effects of the global debt crisis, for which some of their chief executive officers were sent to prison. The tactic turned out to be in vain as the banks ultimately had to be rescued by a government takeover.

Now, almost three months into his new job as head of enforcement for the blue-chip SIX Swiss Exchange, Jared Bibler said that it is too early to tell what kinds of misbehaviour may need to be rooted out on the stock market. But recent data suggests to him that there are probably more market manipulation cases to be made.