The cooperation of a single Wall Street trader has led directly led to the prosecution of 10 individuals. That makes David Slaine one of the most productive informants in the history of US financial crimes. In a sentencing memorandum (.pdf), the US Attorney’s office states that “Slaine’s cooperation has been nothing short of extraordinary” and [...]
Archive | Insider Trading RSS feed for this section
When Red Flags Are Not Enough
Purchase out of the money call options set to expire in two weeks, do not have any activity on that stock before, exclusively use options when you have rarely traded options in the account before, purchase those options just before the announcement of the company’s acquisition, and then quickly try to move the money off-shore. [...]
Private Company Shares, Valuation, and Employee Stock Repurchases
There has always been a theoretical discussion that there could be insider trading on private company shares. I have not seen the theory tested in court. However, a recent enforcement case by the SEC gets close to the theory. The case involves a company re-purchasing shares from employees at a discounted price. The SEC makes [...]
The Leaves Say You Will Go Free
The insider trading case against Raj Rajaratnam seemed very tight. The prosecutors had him on tape discussing the inside information from wiretaps. So why did he fight his insider trading charges and get a lesser sentence than the 11 years that was handed down last week? Ola Leaves. Suketu Mehta in the Daily Beast discussed [...]
I Wonder if We Will Laugh at his Phone When He Gets Out?
You could watch the movie Wall Street and many things may still ring true. Of course its the 1980s, so the clothes and the women’s hair stick out. But the icon is the big brick cell phone. It was huge and expensive for its time. And all it did was makes phone calls. It was [...]
More on the Massachusetts Regulations on Expert Networks
The Massachusetts Secretary of State issued a new regulation that would affect the ability of investment advisors to use expert networks. This was a direct result of Risk Reward Capital Management being based in Massachusetts. Since the management company was registered as an investment adviser in Massachusetts they are subject to examination and enforcement by [...]
Pillow Talk at Playboy Leads to Insider Trading
The headline was too hard to ignore. I suppose there must be some compliance lessons to be learned. But first, the facts: William A. Marovitz, who is married to former Playboy Enterprises Inc. Chief Executive Officer Christie Hefner, made $100,952 on the trades, according to an SEC complaint. The SEC alleges that on five occasions [...]
Who Caught Them? Compliance or the SEC?
The SEC announced they had obtained an emergency freeze against three Swiss-based traders under an allegation of insider trading. The SEC claims that Compania International Financiera S.A., Coudree Capital Gestion S.A., and Chartwell Asset Management Services purchased more than a million common shares of Arch Chemicals just prior to the announcement that it was going [...]
Insider Trading: A Dirty Business
One of the major tactics of hedge funds is to “arbitrage reality”, operating with a better understanding of a company and its stock price than other participants in the market. In a legitimate operation, that means lots of research. On the wrong side it means getting inside information about a company’s earnings, upcoming deals, and [...]
Raj is Guilty. Nobody Is Surprised.
If you read about the evidence, you can’t really be surprised that Raj Rajaratnam was found guilty of insider trading. That he was found guilty on all counts was mildly interesting, but not much. We may get some interesting new legal developments in insider trading law from the appellate decisions. But probably not. The case [...]
Social Media
My social media policies database is available to you.
Affilate
This website uses the Canvas Wordpress theme from WooThemes. (affiliate link)
