Where the priorities lie

It's the same the whole world over

It's the poor what gets the blame

It's the rich what gets the pleasure

Ain't it all a bloody shame

The Times reports:

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has prosecuted eight cases of insider trading in the past five years and secured 12 convictions. By comparison, the Department for Work and Pensions prosecuted or penalised more than 10,000 benefit fraudsters last year. Yet large numbers of investors appear to be receiving and benefiting from confidential information from inside FTSE-listed companies.

This newspaper analysed share price movements on the day before every major profit warning and every merger or acquisition announcement over the past two years. On the day before a profit warning, the share price of the company that issued the warning fell in 67 per cent of cases, suggesting that a number of investors were offloading shares in advance of the bad news, potentially saving tens of millions of pounds.

On the day before a takeover announcement, however, the share price increased in 70 per cent of cases, suggesting that investors were buying in advance of good news.

Hardly a surprise, given the Tories' links with those and such as those ...