Regulation and supervision of Kuwait capital markets : a critical analysis of the risk based approach

Regulation of the financial markets requires a clear plan articulating how to financial regulators will allocate limited resources to highest risk areas. Each financial regulator has bring their own cultural views to the job of protecting the integrity of the markets. This research investigates Kuwait Capital Markets Law No.7 of 2010 and its effectiveness in providing adequate supervision and enforcement to prevent insider trading. Using a risk-based approach allows efficient analyses of the available data. Creating a new, risk-based framework to address the regulation of Kuwaiti capital markets and to formulate financial regulations that are sufficient and appropriate is an efficient and productive approach to much-needed regulatory reform. It also compares the Kuwaiti approach with the UK approach and IOSCO standards to reveal the weaknesses in Kuwait legal system. With these weaknesses in mind, better regulations to protect the markets can be promulgated. Elite interviews have been conducted in this research to fill gaps in the literature and review and validate the research findings. This research investigates the peculiar concomitant independence and accountability of Kuwait Capital Market Authority (CMA) and its mandate to be a robust regulator and to supervise and enforce regulations. In addition to the currently insufficient framework regarding disclosure obligations, the ill-defined legal responsibilities of insiders and inadequacies of the whistle-blowing system are among the notable shortcomings. This thesis also investigates enforcement procedures in financial services and stock markets. Taken together, there currently exist significant problems with the current framework that hinder the achievement of the CMA’s goal to protect market integrity, prevent insider trading, and promote investor confidence. The resulting analyses herein suggest that insider trading regulations are inadequate to either deter or punish insider trading in the stock markets. As the CMA has not introduced a coherent risk-based approach to assess insider trading risks; that has become the main contribution of this work. This thesis discusses in-depth these flaws and proposes a variety of solutions and areas of improvement to develop a robust and effective scheme to regulate and deter the insider trading. It provides guidelines for the CMA to apply a risk-based approach to revising and implementing the new and necessary regulatory reforms