The conviction for insider trading last week of Tim Blackstone, a financial public relations adviser, was little more than a Pyrrhic victory for the UK authorities. The rarity of such convictions, and the fact that most of those convicted are small fry in the financial markets, underline the impotence of regulators in stamping out one of the world's oldest professions.
At a time when the mob hunts down company directors who receive fat pay cheques and regulators crusade against conflicts of interest in the securities industry, it is curious that so little time and effort is invested in tackling the rampant insider trading which so many people in the industry accept goes on. It has, after all, been a criminal offence in the UK for 10 years â and, in some countries, much less than that.
