In its annual report for 2015, the financial watchdog said it "followed up 11 acquisition requests (direct and indirect, internal and external) in order to verify the companies' compliance with relevant rules and regulations."
The QFMA disclosed that it received nine complaints, of which four of them were disposed of and five were pending during the year in review.
Highlighting that during the year, a number of violation cases were referred to the QFMA's investigation committee, it said 19 cases, pending before the committee, were completed and eight cases were referred to the disciplinary committee.
Punishments of cautioning were imposed on three financial services companies and brokerage firms, it said, adding five reconciliation cases were also settled.
Warning was directed towards one company for the alleged violation and two cases were set aside to be considered before the committee.
The disciplinary committee looked into 12 violation referred to it and there was one appeal against disciplinary committee's decision, QFMA said.
During 2015, the appeals committee – headed by one of the presidents of the Courts of Appeal and consisting of two judges of the such court as well as two experts in securities dealings – looked into and decided on 12 cases and requests of stay of QFMA proceedings through holding eight closed door hearings.
During the year, the QFMA received shares listing requests from three companies, one request for offering and listing and 33 requests for listing treasury bills, eight for government debt instruments and two requests for rights issue.
Highlighting that it received 43 corporate governance reports issued by the Qatar Stock Exchange (QSE) listed companies, QFMA said after evaluating those reports, based on their compliance with corporate governance code, it was clear that 90.6% of them comply with the code, 8.9% were in non-compliance and another 0.5% were non-applicable with the corporate governance code articles.
During the year, the QFMA also amended some provisions of mergers and acquisitions rules, allowing it to exempt some parties, partially or wholly, from the requirements of the rules provision, taking into account the public interest, or as required by the market and the protection of the investors' interests.
It also issued listing rules for real estate investment fund's units, in preparation for listing a number of real estate funds on QSE, which would lead to diversity of investment instruments in the Qatari capital market.
The QFMA also re-issued capital adequacy standards of financial services companies operating in QSE for ensuring a strong financial position of these entities.
It also established a separate section specialised in operations of anti-money laundering and combating terrorist financing. This section examines risks relating to money laundering, based on the methodology of the International Monetary Fund.
It is also following up “suspicious” transactions and reviewing the weekly statements delivered by financial services companies as well as cash deposits conducted through financial services firms.