Market regulators have begun to investigate whether organisers of last week's attacks tried to profit by selling shares beforehand, German watchdog BAWe said today.
Regulators from 10 to 12 countries including Germany and the United States discussed the investigations yesterday in a global conference call organised by the Madrid-based International Organisation of Securities Commissions (IOSCO), BAWe said.
"We are speaking to one another and we are observing the markets," a BAWe spokeswoman said. "We exchanged ideas on events in the different markets".
IOSCO deputy secretary general Mr Jean Pierre Cristel declined to discuss the organisation's role in the inquiry after European and Asian financial watchdogs began preliminary investigations on Monday.
"Members of IOSCO are absolutely free to undetake such an investigation and ISOCO . . . will do anything it can to assist its members," he said.
Watchdogs in Britain, Germany, France, Switzerland and Japan have already said, or strongly indicated, they are studying trading patterns for any sign an insider had taken a bet the attacks would send shares tumbling.