The causes of financial misconduct, cyber risk, and the manipulation of prediction markets were high on the agenda as leading experts from academia and industry gathered at Lancaster University.

The third international Financial Fraud, Misconduct and Market Manipulation (FFMM) Conference was organised by the Centre for Financial Econometrics, Asset Markets and Macroeconomic Policy (EMP) at Lancaster University Management School (LUMS).

It united researchers and practitioners from 14 countries across Europe, North America, Asia and Australia to share new evidence on how financial misconduct arises, how it can be detected, and how it can be prevented.

Professor Olga Kolokolova, Chair in Finance in the Department of Accounting and Finance at LUMS, said: “It was a pleasure to welcome such a dynamic group of researchers working at the frontier of knowledge.

“The challenges that financial markets face are expanding, as reflected in the new topics discussed this year, including cyber risk, AI, and the manipulation of prediction markets. But old friends such as tax evasion, manipulation of reported performance, and insider trading remain with us and require constant attention and ever more sophisticated detection tools.”

Across the two days, keynotes were delivered by Professor Carol Alexander, of the University of Sussex, and Peter Leitch, a chartered cyber security professional.

The programme opened with a session turning the lens on research itself. It examined how financial conflicts of interest can give rise to publication bias in economics, and the economics of scientific misconduct.

Professor Alexander spoke on Coordinated Journals, Concentrated Networks and Citation Growth: Evidence from Finance, raising important questions about integrity and incentives within academic publishing.

Peter Leitch’s talk, Business Risk Management in a Cyber and AI World, offered a practitioner’s perspective on how organisations can manage risks from cyber threats and artificial intelligence. It complemented a dedicated session on capturing cyber risk in equity markets and its implications for asset prices reflected the growing importance of these risks in the modern world.

Participants further looked at the influence of political contributions on mutual fund returns and environmental violations, the role of credit default swaps and “empty creditors” in corporate misconduct, and market transparency and investor activism.

Delegates discussed financial crime and consumer protection, tax fraud, and systemic risk transmission from decentralised finance. Drawing on a global Natural Language Processing (NLP) analysis presented by the World Federation of Exchanges, they learned how regulators define manipulation across jurisdictions, and examined evidence on the link between social media recommendations and stock price manipulation.

A new session on prediction markets explored how manipulable these markets are and how price discovery works on modern platforms. The Best Paper Award for research on prediction markets, sponsored by LUMS-based , went to Roberto Rozzi, of the University of London, and co-author Itzhak Rasooly for their paper How Manipulable are Prediction Markets?

The conference closed with a session on insider trading, including its seasonal patterns and a new take on AI-driven surveillance of shadow insider trading.

Professor Kolokolova added: “We want to thank all the speakers, session chairs, discussants, PhD student helpers, participants and supporters who contributed to the success of the conference. We are looking forward to welcoming the community back to Lancaster in the future.”