Guide to Analysing Companies

Separate trading of registered interest and principal of securities
See strips. 
Serious Fraud Office
A special body set up in the UK at the end of the 1980s to inves-
tigate large and serious cases of suspected fraud. The squad is
an independent government department run by the attorney-
general, who heads the country’s criminal justice system. There
were three main reasons for setting up the Serious Fraud Office
(sfo):
 concern that deregulated markets had made crookery
easier;
 the complicated nature of large cases of financial fraud,
and the need for an investigative team with specialist
(that is, accounting) skills;
 the ability of fraudsters to play off one government
department against another; the sfo was designed to
make it easier for crime-fighting teams to co-operate with
each other.
So far, the sfo has spent a lot of public money on investiga-
tions but successfully prosecuted few alleged fraudsters.
SET
Short for Secure Electronic Transaction, a standard protocol that
is designed to do two things:
S
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 to ensure the security of electronic transactions,
particularly transactions over the internet;
 to convince consumers that remote electronic
transactions can be made secure.
After a slow start when the internet bubble burst, together
with a reluctance among consumers to divulge details of their
credit cards online, remote transactions have picked up.
Shoppers, particularly those short of time in the run-up to holi-
days such as Christmas, are realising that online transactions
can be made securely and with the minimum of fuss.
Settlement date
The date by which deals for the buying and selling of securi-
ties must be settled; that is, the securities must be paid for by
the buyer and delivered by the seller. With the growth in elec-
tronic trading, settlement dates have crept closer and closer to
the date of the agreed transaction. Many exchanges now aspire
to T 
 1 (settlement one day after the transaction has taken
place).