Sky Blog
In recent years, activist investors and the companies they target have attracted considerable attention—in the press, in the business and legal communities, in the political arena, and in academia. The fundamental question under debate is whether activist interventions create or …
Insider trading is a serious form of misconduct and can result in defendants receiving lengthy prison sentences and significant monetary sanctions. Our working paper, ‘Sanctions Imposed for Insider Trading in Australia, Canada (Ontario), Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, the …
On July 13, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) adopted a final rule related to the reporting and public dissemination of security-based swap (SBS) transaction information. The rule builds on an earlier reporting rule for security-based swap dealers (SBSDs) finalized …
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC or Commission) brought over 400 enforcement actions in the first half of fiscal year (FY) 2016, and is on pace to surpass its record of 807 enforcement actions in a single …
The Securities and Exchange Commission proposed Regulation Fair Disclosure (Reg FD) on December 20, 1999. The motivation behind the proposal was concern that an informational advantage provided by selective disclosures to certain market participants was resulting in a loss of …
While it is illegal for insiders to trade on material, non-public information, the SEC has created a safe harbor Rule 10b5-1 since October 2000, by allowing insiders to set up trading plans in advance of actual trading.[1] Since these …
Corporate information that moves stock-market prices has long sat at the center of modern securities regulation in the United States. The Great Depression-era securities laws at the foundation of the field require much mandatory disclosure of this type of information. …
The Supreme Court decided to consider the meaning of the personal benefit requirement in an insider trading case based on a tipping violation. It accepted review of the Ninth Circuit’s decision in United States v. Salman,[1] which reached …
They say that one should not look a gift horse in the mouth. We decided to go against this proverb and look carefully in the mouth of one such gift horse. After all, we still remember from high school reading …
Regulators demand the impossible when they require issuers to design and implement an effective compliance program to guard against insider trading, a crime that neither Congress nor the SEC has defined with any specificity. This problem is then compounded by …
Options backdating? Who would be so arrogant to be still backdating their options? It has been exactly ten years since the Wall Street Journal’s exposé on “lucky CEOs.”[1] The intriguing question though is whether the executives could resist temptation …
Ever since the SEC adopted Rule 10b5-1in 2000 the rule has been the subject of controversy. Some have questioned its validity, others have claimed that it has been abused. The commentary that follows addresses one suspected abuse of Rule 10b5-1, …
How does legal knowledge affect corporate insiders’ trading behavior? Do corporate insiders with law degrees trade differently from others? On the one hand, with a better understanding of regulations, legal insiders are more aware of the effects and risk of …
Professor John P. Anderson’s article, What’s the Harm in Issuer-Licensed Insider Trading [1] argues that my “Law of Conservation of Securities” has no moral relevance to the question whether to allow such trading.
A stock market insider trade has two …
I have argued that insider trading is morally harmless where the issuer approves the trade in advance and makes certain ex ante and ex post public disclosures.[1] I have also suggested that reforming the law to permit such issuer-licensed …
Our insider trading laws remind us of an old Churchill quote: It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.[1] Insider trading laws have never defined what constitute illegal insider trading information. Yet, the statutory penalties for …
Are securities law and their enforcement effective at mitigating market manipulation activities, especially insider trading activities? The study ‘Exchange Trading Rules, Surveillance and Suspected Insider Trading’, forthcoming in the Journal of Corporate Finance, tries to answer this question with …
In recent years, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) have zealously pursued potential insider trading. After a long string of high-profile successes, the government faces significant roadblocks created last year by the Second Circuit …
In a recent paper, I compare the legal treatment of outsider trading under US and EU law. Outsider trading can be defined as the sale or purchase of listed securities on the basis of material nonpublic information by individuals …