Heinz Insider Trading Came From Goldman Sachs Account
Another black eye for Blankfein.
---
Suspicious Heinz Trading Came From Goldman Sachs Account
Bloomberg
The SEC on Feb. 15 sued “unknown” traders over suspicious trading of Heinz’s options through an account at Goldman Sachs. The New York-based bank told SEC senior counsel Megan Bergstrom that the account holder is a Zurich private wealth client.
The unidentified traders are “foreign traders and trade through a foreign account."
U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff, who is presiding over the case, temporarily froze the assets in the account on Feb. 15 at the SEC’s request.
The SEC yesterday asked Rakoff to keep the assets frozen until the case is resolved, saying there is a “serious risk that the substantial proceeds from the defendants trading will leave the jurisdiction of the U.S. courts in the next few days and may never be recovered,” according to a court filing.
The defendants, using the Goldman Sachs account, invested almost $90,000 in option positions the day before the deal was announced, the SEC said. As a result, their position increased to more than $1.8 million, a rise of almost 2,000 percent.
The SEC said that the traders had advance material nonpublic information about the impending deal when they used an omnibus account in Zurich to buy 2,533 out-of-the-money June call options, which had a strike price of $65 on Feb. 13. Shares closed that day at $60.48.
***
UPDATE - Warren Buffett Betrayed By Insider Trading At Heinz
Last week's Barron's Cover by William Banzai7...
Feb 21, 2013 at 6:35 PM
Reader Comments (3)
If all of your leaders are oligarchs in one form or another we will implode like Russia and NO ONE in DC has the balls of Putin to protect/defend our country. They have all pledged loyalty to Israel or the FED and YOU are nothing but a peon or tool for political whoring.
Insight: When options trading ahead of deals raises eyebrows
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/12/us-usa-options-ma-insight-idUSBRE93B05S20130412
[snip]
(Reuters) - Within 36 hours of Warren Buffett's announcement of a deal to buy H.J. Heinz, U.S. authorities froze an account linked to possible insider trading.
The speed of the crackdown on a lucrative options bet, combined with successful prosecutions of insider trading rings, suggested that regulators were quickly jumping on any suspicious activity.
Yet some veterans of the options business are unconvinced. They worry that very profitable options trading ahead of big corporate news is undermining investor confidence in the fairness of markets.