Insurer’s staff posts earnings on WhatsApp status

ICICI Lombard General Insurance Co, a unit of country’s second-largest private lender, said an employee uploaded undisclosed information about third quarter earnings as a personal WhatsApp status, days ahead of the planned release.The worker, who broadcast the information after market hours on Friday, deleted the “status” within an hour, the ICICI Bank Ltd. unit said in a filing to the stock exchange. ICICI Lombard said it has started an internal inquiry. It was the latest mishap in India’s $5.2 trillion stock market, after dairy-product maker Hatsun Agro Product Ltd. this week flagged a similar case of an employee accidentally leaking a draft of quarterly results on WhatsApp.SEBI has over the years tightened regulations involving handling of unpublished information by employees of firms, including directing companies to create a framework for tracking ownership of such data. While the incidents have been isolated, they reignite concerns over insider trading in the world’s fifth-largest stock market. BLOOMBERG