An employee of a commercial printing firm is setting the layout for an unreleased quarterly financial report of a publicly traded medical device manufacturer detailing an unexpected product recall. Prior to public dissemination, the employee tells their spouse about the upcoming report, and the spouse immediately sells short shares of the manufacturer's stock. Under federal securities laws, which of the following statements correctly describes the insider trading liability of the printing firm employee and the spouse?
- Both the employee and the spouse can be held liable for insider trading because the employee breached a fiduciary duty of trust to the employer, and the spouse traded on material nonpublic information.Cevap
- BOnly the employee can be held liable, because insider trading penalties under federal law apply strictly to the party who originally misappropriates the material nonpublic information.
- COnly the spouse can be held liable, because statutory financial liabilities and disgorgement penalties attach exclusively to the person executing the security trade.
- DNeither party can be held liable because the employee is an external third-party vendor rather than a corporate officer or director of the medical device manufacturer.
Cevap
Both the employee and the spouse can be held liable for insider trading because the employee breached a duty of confidentiality owed to their employer, and the spouse knowingly traded on material nonpublic information.
Both the employee and the spouse are liable under federal securities laws. The employee misappropriated confidential client information in breach of a duty of trust owed to their employer (tipper liability). The spouse knowingly acted upon this material nonpublic information to execute a transaction (tippee liability).
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Tipper and Tippee Liability under the Misappropriation Theory
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