Jake's View | Has the securities regulator taken a step too far with its ill-defined request for cooperation?

For cooperation to be recognised, parties must go above and beyond their statutory and regulatory obligations.”

-- Thomas Atkinson Executive director, Enforcement

Securities and Futures Commission

SCMP, January 15

The thing about law that makes it law is that there is a solid anchor to it. An act is either legal or illegal. We can dispute which of the two any act may be, but we refer to the law to see what makes it so.

Imagine, however, that instead of having law by which to make their rulings, judges were required to decide only whether they personally think any plea made to them was, for want of any precise word, fair.

There certainly have been systems of justice like this in the past, there are even some today, and they are marvellously efficient. Their rulings come rapidly and decisively while appeals are pointless if all that matters is a judge’s state of mind at the time he makes his judgment. It works like a charm.

Let us be glad that we do not have this sort of system of justice in Hong Kong. Well, not yet anyway, only partially.

When Mr Atkinson tells us that “parties” whom the SFC is in the process of nailing up to a wall may reduce the penalties that will fall on their heads if they “go above and beyond their statutory and regulatory obligations”, there are a few questions to be asked.