United Arab Emirates - Mubasher: In response to the short-selling practices circulated in some news media reports over the past few days, the Securities and Commodities Authority (SCA) issued a statement on Thursday, December 25, 2014, highlighting that “the technical regulations and trading mechanisms of the UAE financial markets do not permit, or support, short-selling practices up to this point, unless done in accordance with the SCA Board Decision No. (48) concerning the Regulations as to Short-Selling of Securities”.

Moreover, SCA “has not issued approvals to any local bodies to practice short-selling”. Accordingly, “any short-selling practices are considered a clear violation of SCA regulations and legislations and violators would be subject to appropriate legal actions”.

The recent rise of short-selling on local markets has negatively affected the performance of stock market indices.

It is worth mentioning that the SCA abovementioned decision defines short-selling as "the sale of borrowed securities or securities not owned by the seller" and reserved the practice for market makers, in addition to other cases approved by SCA.

SCA also reiterated that regulated short-selling practices are only reserved for market makers.