FSA fines Sir Ken Morrison £210,000 for Disclosure and Transparency Rules failings
August 16, 2011
The FSA has today fined Sir Ken Morrison pound;210,000 for breaching the Disclosure and Transparency Rules ("DTR") by failing to disclose his reduced shareholding and voting rights in Wm Morrison Supermarkets Plc ("Wm Morrison").
Shortly after his retirement as Chairman of Wm Morrison, the company announced on 28 March 2008 that Sir Ken had a notifiable holding of voting rights of 6.38%. After the announcement on 28 March 2008 there were no further shareholding notifications made concerning Sir Ken's holdings until 1 March 2011 - just under three years later - despite the fact that he had reduced his holdings during that period to 0.9%. Sir Ken failed to notify Wm Morrison on four separate occasions when his voting rights fell below 6%, 5%, 4% and 3% which he should have done.
While Sir Ken did not financially benefit from these breaches, his failure to notify Wm Morrison of the changes to his shareholding resulted in Wm Morrison not being in a position to update the market in accordance with the DTR rules. This resulted in the market being misled as to the ownership of voting rights in WM Morrison and Sir Ken's shareholding being stated incorrectly in Wm Morrison's annual report of 31 January 2010.
Cross References
FSA Final notice: Sir Ken Morrison