The government's multiyear campaign to ferret out insider trading on Wall Street has yielded multiple prosecutions of former employees of SAC Capital Advisors, the giant hedge fund owned by the billionaire investor Steven A Cohen.
On Friday, federal authorities took aim at the fund itself.
In what officials are calling the largest-ever settlement of an insider trading action, SAC agreed to pay securities regulators about $602 million to resolve a civil lawsuit related to improper trading at the fund.
The landmark penalty exceeds, at least before adjustment for inflation, the fines meted out in the 1980s-era scandals involving Ivan F Boesky and Michael R Milken, records at the time. It also underscores SAC's central role in the government's recent push to prosecute illegal conduct on trading desks and in executive suites, an effort that has yielded about 180 civil actions and more than 75 criminal prosecutions.
SAC also agreed Friday to pay $14 million to resolve its role in an insider trading ring that illegally traded technology stocks including Dell.
"These settlements call for the imposition of historic penalties," said George S Canellos, the Securities and Exchange Commission's acting enforcement director.
Canellos said the resolutions did not prevent the future filing of additional charges against any person, specifically citing Cohen, who was not named as a defendant in the civil actions on Friday. Cohen has not been charged with any wrongdoing and has told his clients that he believes he has behaved properly.
In the bigger case, the agency said an SAC unit would forfeit $602 million to settle claims that it sold nearly $1 billion in shares of two pharmaceutical companies after a former portfolio manager at the fund received secret information from a doctor about problems with a new drug for Alzheimer's disease.
For SAC, which is based in Stamford, manages $15 billion and holds one of the best investment records on Wall Street, the settlements, while another blow to its reputation, resolve a matter that caused some of its investors to withdraw their money. Investors became skittish last fall after regulators warned SAC that they planned to sue the fund.
"These settlements are a substantial step toward resolving all outstanding regulatory matters and allow the firm to move forward," said Jonathan Gasthalter, a spokesman for SAC.
The settlements still need to be approved by Judge Victor Marrero of Federal District Court in Manhattan, the presiding judge in the case. As part of its agreement with regulators, SAC neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing. That entrenched S E C practice - permitting defendants to settle civil claims without acknowledging wrongdoing - has come under increased scrutiny by the courts, a trend that legal experts say could lead the judge to question the settlement.
The cases brought on Friday echo earlier criminal charges against SAC employees. In December, prosecutors indicted Mathew Martoma, a former SAC portfolio manager at the centre of the questionable drug-stock trades tied to a new Alzheimer's drug. And Jon Horvath, a former SAC analyst, pleaded guilty last year to participating in the Dell insider trading ring.
©2013 The New York Times News Service
