No company is going to enjoy being told by its regulator to go back to shareholders and clarify a statement that it’s already formally made to the stock market — less still if there is some question that, albeit inadvertently, it has been selectively briefing to the possible detriment of some of its investors and if the backdrop is a sharp fall in its share price.
That is exactly what befell Hiscox last week, after the FTSE 100 insurer had to qualify and explain remarks that it had made to analysts in a meeting to discuss its recently issued trading update covering the first nine months of the year.
In this particular case, the worries were about the nuances in Hiscox’s use of the