Market Abuse and Price Manipulation on Security Markets

In this research, we discuss the so-called “turbo scandal”, an event that agitated Austrian public in 2009 when information about the alleged manipulation of turbo-certificates on the Vienna Stock Exchange appeared. Investors claimed that some issuers of turbo-certificates were pushing down the prices of underlying assets on purpose in order to break the barrier level of turbo-certificates and in this way make them valueless. Turbo scandal belongs to trade based manipulation which is also the most difficult to be disguissed. Research is divided in three analyses two daily and one intraday event study. Examples of empirical research based on real prosecuted cases are rare what is mainly due to the complex research and financial costs that has to be undertaken in order to disguise manipulators and their techniques. Hence this kind of research is often left to financial market authorities rather than to a single researcher. Nevertheless, we do hope that our results will be of certain help to other researchers and competent authorities who tackle the problem of market manipulation.