A. Insider dealing or insider trading:
Someone buys or sells securities using information that is not publicly available. Chinese walls are measures that you can take to stop knowledge in one department of your company being illegally used by another department, to buy or sell shares for example.
Price fixing: a group of companies in the same market secretly agree to fix prices at a certain level, so they do not have to compete with each other.
Market rigging: a group of investors work together to stop a financial market functioning as it should, to gain an advantage for themselves.
Exercise 6.3
Answer the questions using expressions from parts A of the text.
1) Two ferry companies with ferries on the same route secretly meet in order to decide the prices they will charge next summer. What are they guilty of?
2) A company that wants to keep its share price high makes secret payments to investors who buy its shares. What are the company and the investors guilty of?
3) A rich businessman lends $1 million to a politician so that he can buy a house. The politician pays no interest on the loan and does not mention it when asked to give a complete account of his finances. Which word, used especially about politicians, do people use to talk about this?
4) Specialists in one department of a financial institution are advising Company X on a merger with another company. In another department of the financial institution, traders hear about this and buy large numbers of Company X's shares. What are they guilty of? (2 expressions) What should the financial institution do to prevent this?
5) A company selling weapons to a foreign government makes secret payments to politicians who make decisions on which companies to buy arms from. What could these payments be called? (4 expressions) What is the company and the government guilty of? (2 expressions)