Fingerprint Cards fined by Swedish exchange

Swedish biometrics firm Fingerprint Cards has been fined by Nasdaq Stockholm's regulations authority for a regulations breach, with a punitive fine of SEK 916.496 ($100,000) imposed on the company.The Disciplinary Committee has found that Fingerprint Cards acted in breach of item 3.1.5 of the Rule Book and in breach of the regulations issued by the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority, (Finansinspektionen), FFFS 2007:17 when publishing a revenue forecast on December 9, 2015.Furthermore, Fingerprint Cards also breached the same item in the Rule Book through a statement to the media on the same day. Moreover, Fingerprint Cards did not inform the exchange prior to publication of the information, which must be considered potentially significant price sensitive.Finally, Fingerprint Cards is not considered to have met the requirements regarding sufficient capacity for information disclosure, item 2.4.3 of the Rule Book.FPC CEO Christian Fredrikson has reacted to the measure by stating: “We take a serious view of these events and have naturally taken the criticism leveled at the company's information disclosure practices on board. We attach great importance to maintaining a proper dialog with stock market participants regarding the company's financial communication.”While we have learned from these criticisms, I would like to point out that over the past year, we have strengthened the investor relations and communication organization. We will continue to improve our information disclosure and communication with stock market participants.”The Disciplinary Committee has concluded that Fingerprint Cards did not act in compliance with the Rule Book in a number of situations during 2015 and 2016. Although, to a certain extent, the individual breaches could be considered to be excusable and entail an error committed by the company's distribution service, and were outside of the company's control.However, in the related documents, the exchange also took aim at the Twitter comments by Johan Carlström, the Company's former CEO and major shareholder.”[The] former CEO and director has, on three occasions (once in September 2015 and twice in March 2016) made statements on his Twitter account regarding the Company and its future, without being authorised to act as a spokesperson for Fingerprint.”Johan Carlström appears to have ignored the written warning which, according to the Company, the chairman issued Johan Carlström after his statement in September 2015.”The Exchange has not been able to observe any obvious actual impact on the price of the Company's share in connection to the statements, but it is highly likely that the price has been affected to some extent”.To which FPC responded: “The Company shares the Exchange's assessment that it is very unfortunate that Johan Carlström, in light of his previous positions with the Company, made statements in social media which run the risk of being perceived as containing price-sensitive information ߪ Carlström's tweets, which were made in his capacity as a private person, were not based on any information other than such information which is duly communicated and generally available on the market.”

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