Treasury committee calls for hedge funds to stop profiting from poll data
The chair of parliament's influential Treasury committee has called for hedge funds to stop commissioning private polls and then profiting from the market’s reaction after reports of the huge profits made from leaks about the Brexit referendum result.
After a long investigation, Bloomberg reported that hedge funds had made millions off the pound's collapse on the night of the Brexit referendum after Nigel Farage, leader of the Leave campaign and UKIP party, appeared to admit defeat before the final result was published.
Farage's concession on the night sent the pound higher but results from private polls indicated that the vote had gone the other way, enabling hedge funds that had paid for early access to the poll results, to capitalise from one of the largest currency falls in modern times.
Pollsters have said they believed Brexit was one of the most profitable single days in the history of their industry. The seven-month investigation from Bloomberg led to claims that a number of other pollsters commissioned their own private exit surveys to help them make money.
YouGov, Survation, ICM, BMG and ComRes were among the companies commissioned to provide work, though there is no suggestion that they broke any laws as while pollsters cannot publish data gathered while the polling booths are open, there are no laws to prohibit the data being passed directly to clients for trading purposes.
The Prime Minister's official spokesman said the investigation are "matters for the authorities to look at if they believe there is reason to do so".
Nicky Morgan, Tory MP and chair of the Treasury select committee, said: "The relationship between pollsters and their private clients needs to be much more transparent."
A parliamentary committee on political polling and digital media has also demanded polling company representatives face new questions after this news emerged.
Farage denied placing currency bets against sterling on the night of the EU referendum. A spokesperson for Farage said he “had no financial interest in currency movements on the night of Brexit”.
Farage claimed that he had learned the true results of the referendum after giving his interview with Sky News and had been misinformed of the results by erroneous polls.