Author Archives: Ariel Ben Hattar
Central Securities Depositaries in the Age of Tokenized Securities
The distributed ledger technology offers a new way to transfer securities and record their ownership. When fully deployed, it could form the backbone of a new market infrastructure, and could even replace central securities depositaries as we know them today. The Federal Council however raised the possibility that certain distributed ledger infrastructures could be themselves qualified as central securities depositaries. This article reviews cases where the rules on central securities depositaries could apply in a distributed ledger technology context, and describes how the topic is addressed in the proposed Federal Act on Adapting Federal Law to the Developments of the Distributed Ledger Technology.
By Jacques Iffland / Ariel Ben Hattar (Reference: CapLaw-2020-05)
Can publicly available data become insider information?
Investors of the twenty-first century can harness the power of publicly available data to form a view on a specific company or – more generally – on a particular investment topic. Satellite imagery, marine and air traffic trackers, keyword or search engine trends can provide critical insights on how a company is performing, sometimes unbeknownst to the company itself and most other interested investors. This contribution explores whether there are circumstances in which data extracted from public sources is or can become insider information under Swiss law.
By Ariel Ben Hattar (Reference: CapLaw-2019-13)