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 to be purchased by Lonza Group Ltd.
It does not take much detective work to look at this chart and see that there was some suspicious trading leading up to the July 11 announcement date.
You see the stock price rising and an increase in trading volume. According to the SEC complaint, about 1 million shares in that increased volume came from three defendants. The average trading volume for Arch leading up to the merger announcement was just under 200,000 shares per day.
The hard part will be the SEC proving that the defendants had material, non-public information and used it in breach of some obligation. Clearly, their trading looks suspicious. Proving it was illegal will take more work.
The big question I have, and that compliance professionals that deal with insider trading should have, is how did the trades get flagged?
The SEC has said they are increasing market surveillance and market intelligence to spot suspicious activity. Did the SEC catch this on their own?
Was it compliance? It would seem that the activity coincided very closely with the merger and could easily have been flagged as suspicious by a vigilant broker/dealer compliance department. When a stock usually only trades 200,000 per day, seeing hundreds of thousands of shares being purchased with big public news should be a red flag.
Was it a whistleblower? The SEC has created a new bounty program. Perhaps an insider discover the activity and alerted the SEC in hopes of a financial windfall.
Was it a wiretap? It’s clear from the case against the Galleon Group and Raj Rajaratnam that the government is suing wiretaps to investigate insider trading.
To me the most interesting part of this case will be finding out how the trades got flagged. The rest of the case tied to proving insider trading is not interesting.
Sources:
- SEC Complaint against Compania International Financiera S.A., Coudree Capital Gestion S.A., and Chartwell Asset Management Services (.pdf)
- SEC Obtains Asset Freezes Within Days of Alleged Insider Trading by Three Swiss Entities – SEC press release
- SEC freezes assets on Lonza-Arch Chemicals trades in Marketwatch
- SEC Files Insider Trading Case Over Arch by Bob Van Voris in Bloomberg
- How to Get Caught Insider Trading – prior post on Compliance Building
- The New SEC Whistleblower Rule – prior post on Compliance Building
- Insider Trading: A Dirty Business – prior post on Compliance Building