Leading experts from academia and industry gathered at Lancaster University for the third international conference on Financial Fraud, Misconduct, and Market Manipulation.

The third Financial Fraud, Misconduct and Market Manipulation (FFMM) Conference was held on September 10th and 11th, 2026, organised by the Centre for Financial Econometrics, Asset Markets and Macroeconomic Policy (EMP) at Lancaster University Management School (LUMS). Now firmly established in the academic calendar, the event once again brought together 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.

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

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

New this year was a session on prediction markets, which 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 CRUCIAL, went to Roberto Rozzi of the University of London and his co-author Itzhak Rasooly for their paper “How Manipulable are Prediction Markets?”. Warmest congratulations!

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

Two keynote speakers shared their insights during plenary talks and over coffee breaks. Professor Carol Alexander of the University of Sussex spoke on “Coordinated Journals, Concentrated Networks and Citation Growth: Evidence from Finance,” raising important questions about integrity and incentives within academic publishing itself. On the second day, Peter Leitch, a Chartered Cyber Security Professional, offered a practitioner’s perspective on how organisations can manage risks from cyber threats and artificial intelligence in his talk “Business Risk Management in a Cyber and AI World.”

Professor Olga Kolokolova, Chair in Finance at the Accounting and Finance Department at LUMS, commented: “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.”

The FFMM Conference organising committee extends its sincere thanks to all speakers, session chairs, discussants, PhD student helpers, participants and supporters who contributed to the success of this third conference, and looks forward to welcoming the community back to Lancaster in the future.