FMA: No hold-up

The FMA is investigating the high-profile manager and is believed to have started its inquiry in mid-late last year.

It was reported this week that the scope of the inquiry had been extended to take in two stockbroking firms and that investigators were seeking emails and text messages. That has since been discounted - the FMA said it sent out information requests as part of its ongoing investigation.

FMA spokesman Andrew Park said it was incorrect that there was a hold-up in the investigation due to record-keeping at firms.

“There is no hold up in our investigation. There is no problem with record-keeping. We will not comment on the information we have requested and it would be inappropriate for third parties to speculate and report on what that might be.”

Comments from our readers

On 26 February 2015 at 8:35 am winstonkey said:

This is the worst of all worlds for the industry. Secrecy is fine if everyone keeps secrecy, but someone is leaking like a sieve - how else is so much specific innuendo floating around the markets?

If this were a sensitive police investigation, what would be happening?

We'd have a statement from the police saying "we are investigating X for the following alleged crimes, Y and Z. We expect the investigation to take N months. We will update the public as appropriate."

So far we have had pretty much no direct comment from the FMA which has just fuelled the rumour and innuendo industry, which is bad for the firm being investigated, but also bad for other players in the market: other fund managers who can't explain why they are (or are not) different, research houses who look foolish with their lack of insight, but most of all investors and advisors who are continuously tasked with making prudent decisions but have to do that right now in the face of very imperfect information. Even an indication of how long this might drag on would be a start to retaining confidence in thee industry.

I can see absolutely nothing on the FMA website explaining what they are doing yet there seems to be lots of specific information flying around. Claytons secrecy.....

On 26 February 2015 at 8:59 am NormanStacey said:

Gosh, tough on Milford & seems a little removed from "to promote and facilitate the development of fair, efficient and Transparent markets".
Maybe nobody did anything wrong, or which could be improved. It would be helpful to resolve it.

There is no hold-up with the investigation into Milford Asset Management, the Financial Markets Authority says.

Thursday, February 26th 2015, 5:59AM 2 Comments

Comments from our readers

www.GoodReturns.co.nz