26/06/2013 – At its meeting on 25 June 2013, the Board of Directors of Oslo Børs resolved to impose a violation charge on Northland Resources S.A. of NOK 1, 262, 425 for a breach of the duty to disclose inside information to the market.
The Board of Directors of Oslo Børs approved the following resolution:
For a breach of the duty to publicly disclose inside information to the market pursuant to the Securities Trading Act, Section 5-2 (1), a violation charge is hereby imposed on Northland Resources S.A. equivalent to 7 times the company’s annual listing fee, i.e. NOK 1, 262, 425, cf. Securities Trading Act, Section 17-4, third paragraph, and Section 15-1, cf. Securities Trading Regulations, Section 13-1.
A brief summary of the case:
The case relates to whether Northland Resources (Northland) failed to publicly disclose in a timely manner information about higher than expected operating costs and capital expenditures, as well as the effect of changed assumptions on other matters that could affect the company’s revenue and financing requirements.
Northland issued a stock exchange announcement on 24 January 2013 concerning higher costs as mentioned above and the company’s recognition of a significant funding shortfall for the years 2013-2014. Oslo Børs is of the opinion that inside information in relation to the higher costs was in existence in the company by 29 November 2012 at the latest.
In evaluating the scale of the sanction to be applied in this case, Oslo Børs paid particular attention to the long period before the information was disclosed the market. The sensitivity of the information for the market was also taken into account. It was noted that when the inside information in question was publicly disclosed, this resulted in a sharp fall in the company’s share price.
Oslo Børs also noted that during the period after the company became aware of the variations it continued to report routinely about its performance and financial situation without explicitly drawing attention to the variations in relation to the information previously communicated to the market. The company also raised external capital during the period in question.
