ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes global insider trading regulation from one uniformly understood perspective–fairness. Although the International Organization of Securities Commissions has undertaken efforts to standardize international securities regulation, it suggests that greater international coordination of insider trading regulation is a desirable objective. Conversely, informational fairness principles in Japanese and German insider trading regulation are largely articulated in the relevant statutory provisions, thus enhancing certainty and predictability for transaction and litigation planners. Despite the common roots and substantial overall similarities of the prohibitions against insider trading in the United States, Japan, and Germany, insider trading doctrine has developed differently among the three countries in a number of important respects. Under the insider trading regimes in each country–the United States, Japan, and Germany–insiders are not liable for trading while in possession of insignificant nonpublic information. Japanese insider trading regulation has similar attributes in these respects.
