Johannesburg Stock Exchange has been rocked by the sacking of the head of its equity derivatives business for irregular trading.

Africa’s biggest bourse revealed today that Allan Thomson was dismissed on Friday following an investigation found he had been involved in irregular trading on his own trading account.

In an interview with news agency Reuters, Thomson stated that he had broken internal JSE rules but had not conducted insider trading and that “it was not for my own benefit”.

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Thomson said he put in a “blocking order” to counter certain irregular trading activity in equity derivatives, but instead of following the the usual process, he used his own trading account.

“I tried to put in a blocking order and I did it from my own account,” Thomson said.

“There’s no doubt from a regulator’s point of view ... there were other channels and better channels to address what we deemed was an irregularity in the market.”

The incident is a big blow for the JSE, which was ranked best for regulation in 2010 by the World Economic Forum. The bourse, worth $854 billion is also one of the world's top 20 by market value.

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