Johannesburg- South African regulators will investigate trading in shares of Bidvest and Adcock Ingram during March, the month Bidvest made an offer for a 60 percent stake in the drugmaker.
The Financial Services Board’s division for market abuse will lead the probe and may refer cases of suspected insider trading to the regulator’s enforcement committee, which can fine the guilty parties, the FSB said in an e-mailed statement.
Solly Keetse, a spokesman for the FSB’s Directorate of Market Abuse, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
“There is always the possibility of information leaked before a deal is announced, and I think the FSB are just trying to make sure there was no wrongdoing,” Henre Herselman, a derivatives trader at Nedbank Private Wealth, said by phone in Johannesburg.
“They are very good at monitoring these things as the credibility of the stock exchange is at stake.”
Bidvest, which operates businesses from cleaning and car sales to coal export terminals, offered to pay about 6.2 billion rand ($612 million) to buy the stake in Adcock on March 22, sending Adcock’s shares to their highest price in more than two years.
About 2.2 million Adcock shares traded, or 4.5 times the three-month daily average.
The stock rallied 8.4 percent in March, while Bidvest added 1.8 percent.
Johannesburg’s benchmark FTSE/JSE Africa All Share Index gained 0.4 percent in the month.
February trading in Cipla Medpro South Africa, the country’s third-largest drugmaker, is also being investigated, the FSB also said.
Cipla, the Indian drugmaker which makes generic HIV treatments, offered to buy all ordinary shares of Medpro at 10 rand a share on February 28.
Cipla Medpro rose 5.4 percent in February, while the All Share Index fell 1.9 percent. - Bloomberg News