The new market abuse directive in the Portuguese legal order

Abstract

This paper offers an analysis of the Portuguese Legal Order regarding Market Abuse and Insider Dealing and also of the existing legal instruments for these matters – the Portuguese Securities Code. Essentially, it expresses how, over the past few decades, the Portuguese legislator has been tackling these issues, bearing in mind that Portugal started legislating on these issues even before the first Communitary Directive, implemented in 1989. Considering that, in April 2014, the European Union adopted a new Market Abuse Directive (MAD) imposing a duty on Member States to settle criminal sanctions, the main issue we addressed is how this new legal instrument affected the Portuguese legal order.