Going Dutch: Catch‐all insider trading

In the Netherlands new legislation has come into force in order to deal with insider trading. The legislator followed a new strategy. This time, instead of a provision with well‐defined criteria, a sort of catch‐all provision was created. The aim was to avoid difficulties in proving the offence. As a consequence, a new problem has arisen — usual and accepted behaviour on the stock markets, such as exercising, a green shoe option, is now within the ambit of the penalisation. The Dutch legislator has thus created some exceptions. These developments are analysed in the paper.