Securities regulators from 14 jurisdictions met in Colombo on cross-border enforcement

Sri Lanka’s Securities and Exchange Commission hosted a series of meetings of the International Organization of Securities Commissions in Colombo from 13 to 16 October, bringing securities regulators and enforcement officials together on cross-border investigations and market misconduct, the Colombo Gazette and Lanka Business Online reported on Monday.

The meetings at the Hilton Colombo drew approximately 50 senior representatives from regulators and exchanges. Participating jurisdictions were Australia, Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Canada, New Zealand, India, Germany, Belgium, Singapore, China and Spain — 14 in total, alongside the host.

The programme covered sessions of IOSCO’s Enforcement and Cooperation Committee and its Screening Group, known as Committee 4/SG, together with meetings of the organisation’s Monitoring Group and Steering Committee.

What was discussed

Delegates examined mechanisms for cross-border information exchange, investigative collaboration between regulators, and what the SEC described as increasingly sophisticated forms of securities fraud and market abuse. Participants also considered enforcement challenges arising from technological developments, the digitalisation of financial services and more interconnected markets.

Welcoming delegates, SEC chairman Senior Professor D.B.P.H. Dissabandara said no regulator can address cross-border misconduct alone.

“The speed with which information, transactions and illicit activities can move across borders requires an equally coordinated and timely regulatory response. Strong international cooperation, effective information sharing and mutual trust among regulators are essential to maintaining fair, transparent and resilient capital markets.”

The release named no individual investigations and announced no enforcement decisions arising from the meetings — a point the Colombo Gazette states explicitly. What was agreed, if anything, is not reported.

Sri Lanka’s standing in the organisation

The SEC became an ordinary member of IOSCO in 1993 and a signatory to its Multilateral Memorandum of Understanding in 2004. The MMoU is the benchmark instrument through which securities regulators share information and assist one another in cross-border investigations.

Sri Lanka has sat on the Enforcement and Cooperation Committee since 2015. That committee currently comprises 35 member jurisdictions and is chaired by Éric Jacob, Executive Director of Enforcement at the Autorité des marchés financiers in Québec, with Raffaella Pantano, an adviser at Italy’s CONSOB, as vice-chair.

The SEC also participates in the Growth and Emerging Markets Committee — IOSCO’s largest — the Asia-Pacific Regional Committee, and the Committee on Retail Investors, known as Committee 8.

A near-identical headline from 2024 is a different meeting

Searching this story returns “SEC Sri Lanka hosts IOSCO Policy Committee meeting in Colombo” on both Daily FT and the Daily Mirror. That is not this month’s event. It concerns a meeting of IOSCO’s Committee on Retail Investors held in Colombo in June 2024 — a different committee, a different subject (retail investor education and financial literacy) and a different year.

Both stories are “SEC hosts an IOSCO committee in Colombo,” which is exactly why they merge. The discriminator is the committee: Committee 4 enforcement in October 2026, Committee 8 retail investors in June 2024.

A note on sourcing

Both Monday filings derive from the same SEC press release. Lanka Business Online carries it in full, including the chairman’s quotation and the committee’s membership and office-holders; the Colombo Gazette carries a condensed version. The detail on Committee 4’s size and chairmanship appears only in the LBO text.

No verified newsroom has published independent reporting on the meetings — no attendee interviews, no agenda documents and no account from any visiting regulator. A domain-restricted search across Daily FT, EconomyNext, the Daily Mirror, the Island, the Daily News and the Sunday Times returned nothing of their own on the October gathering.

Not reported

Which exchanges attended alongside the regulators is not stated, nor is the number of individual delegations behind the 14 jurisdictions, nor whether any Sri Lankan enforcement matter was raised. The release does not say whether hosting the meetings carried any cost to the SEC, or how the venue was selected.

Sources: Colombo Gazette, Lanka Business Online.