Suspicious share trades drop to record low in Britain

LONDON (Reuters) - Suspicious trades in a company's shares ahead of a merger or takeover announcement have fallen to a record low on Britain's markets, the Financial Conduct Authority said on Thursday. The FCA's "market cleanliness" figure for 2014 fell to 13.88 percent from 15.1 percent in 2013. The figure provides an indication of the proportion of potential insider trading cases, measured on the basis of abnormal share price moves before takeover announcements. The cleanliness figure was not a perfect measure, the FCA said in its annual report on Thursday. Other factors could trigger share price moves, such as analysts correctly assessing which companies are a takeover target. In the four years to 2009, around the time when British regulators began taking a tougher line on insider trading, the figure remained close to 30 percent. "The observed significant decline in the incidence of potential insider trading cases suggests that insider trading has become rarer," the FCA said. The annual report also said that FCA Chief Executive Martin Wheatley received a basic salary of 460,000 pounds ($718,000) in the financial year to March 31, 2015, unchanged from 2014. Wheatley received a bonus of 92,000 pounds after losing his payment the prior year when the watchdog was criticised for mishandling the announcement of a review into life insurance policies. (Reporting by Huw Jones; Editing by Keith Weir)