In letters to heads of the Central Bank of Iran and the Central Insurance company of Iran, Mohammad Ali Dehqan–Dehnavi said some staff in the two regulatory organizations have access to key information about financial performance of listed banks, credit institutions and insurance companies.
Knowledge of and access to specific information before listed companies officially make public their financial reports leads to illegal and unfair advantage in stock market options.
In recent months, the stock market regulator has stepped up efforts to improve transparency including obliging listed companies to publish their earnings per share (EPS) at regular intervals.
Absence of a reliable EPS forecast has often been seen as one of the fundamental flaws in Iran's share market. Critics say that lack of a public EPS forecast potentially causes institutional investors and big shareholders to gain unfair access to vital corporate information before the rest of the market.
EPS is calculated as a company's profit divided by the outstanding shares of its common stock. The resulting number serves as an indicator of a company's profitability. EPS is a widely used metric to estimate corporate value. A higher EPS indicates greater value.
Accordingly, five groups of listed manufacturing companies have to provide EPS reporting, namely chemical, base metal, mineral, petroleum products as well as cement and plaster industries.