What is inside information under the Market Abuse Regulation?

MAR, Regulation (EU) No 596/2014, has applied directly in every Member State since 3 July 2016, replacing the earlier market abuse directive. It sets one EU framework against three kinds of market abuse (insider dealing, market manipulation and the unlawful disclosure of inside information), with measures to prevent them, so that markets stay sound and investors can trust them. Its three pillars are the prohibitions, stronger investigative powers for regulators, and administrative sanctions; capital and other prudential rules belong to other legislation. In Cyprus CySEC is the competent authority, and two laws of 2016 add its powers, administrative fines and criminal offences.

MAR covers instruments admitted to trading on a regulated market or with admission requested, instruments traded on or admitted to an MTF, instruments traded on an OTF, and any other instrument whose price depends on or affects one of those, such as credit default swaps and contracts for difference. It applies on or off a trading venue, and to conduct outside the EU. Emission allowances and their auctions are included, and the manipulation ban also reaches benchmarks and, where the conduct affects an instrument in scope, spot commodity contracts other than wholesale energy products. Crypto-assets that are not financial instruments are outside MAR. Since 30 December 2024, abuse involving those admitted to trading, or for which admission has been requested, falls under the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA). Crypto-assets that qualify as financial instruments remain within MAR.

All four features must be present together. The information is precise; it has not yet been made public; it concerns, directly or indirectly, one or more issuers or financial instruments; and its publication would probably have a significant impact on the prices of those instruments or of related derivatives. A board's unannounced decision to launch a takeover bid is a classic example. The test is adapted for commodity derivatives, where the information must also be of a kind that law, market rules, contract, practice or custom expects or requires to be disclosed on those markets, and for emission allowances and the products auctioned on them.

A separate category targets front-running. Information about pending orders is inside information if it is precise and price-sensitive and was passed on by a client. Since 4 December 2024 this also covers such information passed on by a person acting for the client, or known through managing a proprietary account or a managed fund. The exam material describes the original, narrower wording, which covered only client order information in the hands of the people who execute orders. Either way, a broker who trades ahead of a large client order is using inside information.

Information is precise when it points to circumstances that exist or may reasonably be expected to come about, or to an event that has happened or may reasonably be expected to happen, and is specific enough for someone to conclude how it might affect prices. Certainty is not needed. In a protracted process, such as negotiations leading to a merger, the final outcome and the intermediate steps connected with it can both be precise, and a step that meets all the criteria on its own is inside information. The Court of Justice of the EU confirmed on 19 March 2026 (Case C-363/24) that information which later proves wrong can still be inside information if, when it was disclosed, it was credible and could give its holder an advantage over other investors.

Significance is measured by the reasonable investor: would such an investor be likely to use the information as part of the basis for an investment decision? Minor news, such as results that differ only marginally from what was expected, usually fails this test. For emission allowance market participants whose aggregate emissions or rated thermal input are at or below the minimum threshold, information about their physical operations is treated as not significant.