SAC Capital

SAC Capital Advisers Concludes Final Insider Trading Case By Agreeing to Pay $135M to Elan Corp. Investors

Published on: November 29, 2016 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

Stephen A. Cohen and SAC Capital will pay a group of Elan Corp. investors $135M to settle their insider trading case against him and the firm. The plaintiffs had contended that sustained they financial losses because of insider trading that involved Elan shares. A judge still has to approve the settlement.

Ex-SAC Capital money manager Mathew Martoma was convicted two years ago for making $285M for SAC Capital on trades involving Elan and Wyeth, both pharmaceutical companies. He used insider information about the clinical trials of an Alzheimer’s drug that companies were developing together. Martoma is appealing his conviction while serving a 9-year prison sentence.

Although Cohen was not charged with insider trading, his firm pleaded guilty and consented to pay $1.8B in criminal and civil penalties. SAC Capital also changed its name to Point72 Asset Management LP. Cohen, meantime, went from managing other people’s money to only being allowed to oversee his multibillion-dollar fortune.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren Calls Out the SEC for Not Stopping Hedge Fund Billionaire Steven Cohen From Starting New Hedge Fund

Published on: April 21, 2016 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren chastised the Securities and Exchange Commission for not barring billionaire Steven Cohen from starting a new hedge fund just months after the regulator scolded him for not properly overseeing an ex-employee convicted of securities fraud.

In 2013, Cohen’s SAC Capital consented to pay $1.8 million and pleaded guilty to fraud charges accusing the hedge fund of allowing insider trading to take place. It wasn’t until January of this year, however, that the SEC told Cohen that he was barred from managing the money of other people until 2018. Now, however, he is already involved in efforts to start Stamford Harbor Capital, a new hedge fund, of which he owns 25%.

Criticizing the SEC in a letter to its chairperson, Mary Jo White, Senator Warren said that Cohen’s application to start the new hedge fund, which the Commission approved, is just another example of the regulator’s enforcement actions failing to properly punish parties that are guilty, not protecting investors, and failing to impede future wrongdoing. It was just this January that Warren said that she believed that U.S. companies manage to commit crimes in part because of poor enforcement. She pointed to the SEC as an agency that often does not succeed in using the full scope of its enforcement powers.

In its case against Cohen, the SEC accused him of not properly supervising Mathew Martoma, who was convicted in of insider trading that allowed SAC to make gains and avoid losses of $276M. (Martoma is appealing his conviction.) While Cohen did not admit to wrongdoing when settling the SEC case, he did retain an independent consultant to ensure legal compliance.

Insider Trading News: SAC Capital Resolves Shareholder Lawsuit, Chinese Traders Settle SEC Charges, Another Court Turns Down Rajat Gupta’s Conviction Appeal SAC Capital Advisors Settles Insider Trading Case for $10M

Published on: December 30, 2015 | by Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas, LLP

SAC Capital Advisors Settles Insider Trading Case for $10M
SAC Capital Advisors has consented to pay $10M to resolve a securities case brought by shareholders of pharmaceutical company Wyeth. The plaintiffs contend that they sustained losses because the hedge fund had been insider trading in the drugmaker’s stock.

The class action securities lawsuit was brought following the arrest a few years back of Mathew Martoma, an ex-SAC Capital portfolio manager. After he was convicted last year of insider trading for using confidential outcomes of a clinical trial involving an Alzheimer’s drug, Martoma was sentenced to nine years behind bars in 2014. According to prosecutors, Martoma’s trades allowed the hedge fund to make $275M.

Other settlements have already been reached over this matter, including a $1.8B settlement with US authorities as well as a guilty plea by SAC Capital. An SAC Capital unit also settled insider trading claims involving Wyeth and Elan Corp. stock—Elan and Wyeth had been developing the Alzheimer’s drug together—for $602M.

SEC Announces Settlement with Two Chinese Traders Over Insider Trading Case
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission says that business associates and cousins Yannan Liu and Zhichen Zhou, who are traders in Hong Kong and China, respectively, have consented to pay over $920,000 to resolve insider trading charges. The two of them will disgorge their entire ill-gotten gains as well as pay penalties.

According to the regulator, Liu and Zhou traded Chindex International and MedAssets Inc. stocks because of nonpublic information they received about their upcoming acquisitions by private equity firms. Liu had been a private equity associate at a company that was connected to both deals.