Reprimand to OrbiMed Advisors LLC for wrongful reporting of a net short position

The Danish Financial Supervisory Authority (“Danish FSA”) has on 11 July 2019 issued a reprimand to OrbiMed Advisors LLC for violation of article 9 of the European Parliament and Council Regulation (EU) No 236/2012 on short sell-ing and certain types of credit default swaps (“the short selling regulation”).

Background

According to article 9 of the short selling regulation, a natural or legal person who has a short position shall at midnight on the trading day on which the position is achieved calculate the net short position. If the net short position requires notification, cf. article 5 and 6 of the short selling regulation, the nat-ural and legal person shall according to article 9 report the position to the relevant competent authority with correct details regarding the identity of the natural or legal person that holds the short position.

If the net short position is 0.2 % or more of the listed company’s issued share capital, the natural or legal person shall report the position to the relevant competent authority no later than 3:30 pm on the following trading day. For shares admitted to trading on Danish trading venues, the Danish FSA is the relevant competent authority. If the net short position is 0.5 % or more of the listed company’s issued share capital, the Danish FSA will publish the net short position on its website. If the net short position falls below the threshold of 0.2 % of the listed company’s issued share capital, it must be reported to the Danish FSA.

On 4 June 2019, the Danish FSA contacted OrbiMed Advicors LLC by e-mail to follow up on a certain net short position that, according to the Danish FSA’s database, had been active for a very long period.

On 7 June 2019, OrbiMed Advisors LLC informed the Danish FSA that the net short position had been reduced below the threshold of 0.2 percent approx. 10 months ago. However, OrbiMed Advisors LLC had failed to report the change of the net short position to the Danish FSA.

On 7 June 2019, OrbiMed Advisors LLC reported the correct notification regarding the specific net short position.

The net short position did never pass the 0.5 percentage or more threshold of the listed company’s issued share capital. I.e. the specific net short position was never nor ever should have been published on the Danish FSA’s website.

OrbiMed Advisors LLC has informed that the missing notification was due to a missed manual check for changes in the reporting threshold exposure.

In order to avoid future delayed filings, OrbiMed Advisors LLC has updated their system to create an alert whenever a reporting threshold in listed companies will be reached.

For more information on short selling, the Danish FSA refers to its website www.finanstilsynet.dk.