Parity-of-information is purported to be the single overarching policy rationale for the European Union (EU) regulation on insider trading. This is because securities trading on the basis of informational advantages is generally prohibited under EU rules, as is tipping (and issuers’ selective disclosure) of material, non-public information. Yet, EU regulations allow market actors, including investment professionals and analysts, that have discovered valuable information -and thereby, have an informational advantage vis-à-vis their trading counterparties- to trade on this information. Relatedly, issuers of financial instruments, takeover bidders and merging parties can share information with a selected group of investors prior to public announcement of the transaction (market sounding), whereas firms can delay public disclosure of inside information and prevent all other market participants from trading on this information. I argue that these exceptions from the parity-of-information theory are -from a doctrinal standpoint- best explained as property rights in information of market actors that have developed new proprietary information with respect to European listed securities. This article, therefore, aims at providing a property rights account of the exceptions to the parity-of-information theory and it illustrates the trade-offs between the parity-of-information and the property rights in information theories underlying European insider trading rules. By extension, I analyze the specific case of activist campaigns as inside information and argue that it would be consistent with the property rights approach to allow activist investors to share their investment and trading strategies with other market participants that further their activist agenda.

中文翻译：

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重新审视欧洲内幕交易理论：信息平价理论的局限性和信息理论中的产权在激进投资策略中的应用

信息均等据称是欧盟 (EU) 内幕交易监管的唯一总体政策依据。这是因为欧盟规则通常禁止基于信息优势的证券交易，以及泄露（以及发行人选择性披露）重要的非公开信息。然而，欧盟法规允许市场参与者，包括投资专业人士和分析师，发现有价值的信息 - 从而相对于他们的交易对手拥有信息优势 - 使用这些信息进行交易。与此相关的是，金融工具的发行人、收购要约人和合并方可以在交易公告（市场探测）之前与选定的一组投资者共享信息，我认为，信息平价理论的这些例外——从理论的角度来看——最好的解释是市场参与者的信息财产权，这些参与者已经开发了关于欧洲上市证券的新专有信息。因此，本文旨在提供对信息平价理论例外情况的产权解释，并说明信息平价与基于欧洲内幕交易规则的信息理论中的产权之间的权衡。通过扩展，我将激进运动的具体案例作为内幕信息进行分析，并认为允许激进投资者与其他市场参与者分享他们的投资和交易策略以推进他们的激进议程与产权方法是一致的。