Blanket cancellation of orders policy

[ESMA70-145-111 MAR Q&A, Q&A 4.1] Article 8(1) of MAR states that “ the use of inside information by cancelling or amending an order placed before the person concerned possessed inside information ” constitutes insider dealing. This presumption is rebuttable under Recital 25 of MAR if the person establishes that they “ did not use the inside information when carrying out the transaction ”. For those reasons, it cannot be concluded that a blanket order cancellation policy per se constitutes insider dealing. It follows that where a firm decides to adopt a blanket cancellation policy for its proprietary trading, the fact that the cancellation may or may not constitute insider dealing will have to be assessed on case-by-case basis, by determining whether or not the cancellation was indeed performed without using the inside information.