Market participants should be careful in their communications (02.07.2024)

The Bank of Russia recommends that market participants exercise due care when disseminating information concerning investors’ rights and legitimate interests. The messages addressed to customers should contain exhaustive data and their wording should be precise and rule out any incorrect or ambiguous interpretation.

On 29 January 2024, Cifra broker LLC sent a message to its customers that their trade transactions on SPB Exchange would be terminated from 30 January 2024. The message did not contain the exact wording that the decision to terminate the transactions had been made solely by Cifra broker LLC and concerned only its customers rather than trading on SPB Exchange in general. As a result, the investment community interpreted the message as a notice that trading in all Russian securities on SPB Exchange would be soon suspended and the exchange would no longer function as a trading platform. The news was distributed in Telegram and mass media causing a negative reaction of market participants: share prices on SPB Exchange dropped by 13% within 20 minutes.

The Bank of Russia examined all the circumstances and did not identify any intent to manipulate share prices on SPB Exchange in the actions of the broker and mass media.

Nevertheless, the Bank of Russia warns that inaccurate information negatively affects the financial market, misleads investors and entails the risk of market manipulation. A violation of the bans on market manipulation, including by deliberately distributing information known to be false, is subject to liability, including criminal liability, under current legislation.