Britain 'has no plans for short-selling ban'

Britain has no plans to ban the speculative practice of short-selling stocks, a spokesman for the Financial Services Authority said Friday, after Germany called for a Europe-wide ban."We have no current plans to introduce a short-selling ban in the UK," the spokesman said, adding that the existing system was transparent enough. "We have an existing short-selling disclosure regime around financial stocks in place and we continue to monitor the activity in our markets accordingly." France, Italy, Spain and Belgium banned short-selling in bank shares because of misleading rumours about their financial health, which saw them suffer massive losses in recent days. Germany meanwhile called Friday for a Europe-wide ban, saying it was "the only way to tackle destructive speculation convincingly." The move echoes steps taken at the height of the global financial crisis sparked by the collapse of US bank Lehman Brothers in 2008, but dealers were sceptical the ban would have any long-lasting effect.Short-selling is the practice of investors selling stocks they do not yet own at current prices in the expectation they will drop before buying them later and making a profit on the difference.