Elan Corp shareholders who sued SAC Capital Advisors LP and founder Steven Cohen for insider trading asked the judge presiding over the hedge fund’s criminal case to reject any accord SAC has reached with prosecutors unless it pleads guilty to the conduct alleged in their case.
Investors in Elan and Wyeth told US District Judge Laura Taylor Swain on Friday that they are “crime victims” of the alleged fraud perpetrated by Stamford, Connecticut-based SAC. If a plea bargain is reached that does not include the fund’s admitting wrongdoing for insider trading in Elan and Wyeth, it should be rejected, they argued in a letter to the court.
SAC and Cohen have been told that US$1.8 billion and admission of wrongdoing by the fund would be the price of resolving the insider-trading charges, people familiar with the matter said.
The amount would be about US$1.2 billion paid as a result of a criminal probe by Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara and includes the more than US$600 million that Cohen has already agreed to pay the US Securities and Exchange Commission to settle a related suit.
“According to published news reports, a plea agreement could be executed by defendants and the government and submitted to the court as soon as today,” Ethan Wohl, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said in the letter. “The plea being negotiated will allow defendants to plead guilty and pay a fine in excess of US$1 billion without admitting liability for insider trading in Elan or Wyeth. A plea agreement on those terms, if tendered to the court, should be rejected.”
Prosecutors have charged Mathew Martoma, a former SAC money manager, with using illegal tips about an Alzheimer’s drug trial to help the firm make profits or avoid losses totaling US$276 million by trading in Elan and Wyeth, in a case the US called the largest insider-trading scheme in history. Martoma pleaded not guilty and is scheduled to go to trial in January.
SAC was indicted in July, accused of operating a conspiracy that stretched as far back as 1999, including trades by Martoma, and reaped hundreds of millions of dollars in illicit profit.
The lawyer said a federal court can reject a plea agreement if it determines that, if any charges are to be dismissed as part of an agreement, the ones remaining reflect “the seriousness of the actual offense behavior.”
While Cohen was not charged in either case, Wohl noted that the SEC has said that he “personally received and benefited” from inside information on trades with Martoma.
SEASONAL WEAKNESS: The combined revenue of the top 10 foundries fell 5.4%, but rush orders and China’s subsidies partially offset slowing demand Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) further solidified its dominance in the global wafer foundry business in the first quarter of this year, remaining far ahead of its closest rival, Samsung Electronics Co, TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said yesterday. TSMC posted US$25.52 billion in sales in the January-to-March period, down 5 percent from the previous quarter, but its market share rose from 67.1 percent the previous quarter to 67.6 percent, TrendForce said in a report. While smartphone-related wafer shipments declined in the first quarter due to seasonal factors, solid demand for artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC) devices and urgent TV-related orders
BYPASSING CHINA TARIFFS: In the first five months of this year, Foxconn sent US$4.4bn of iPhones to the US from India, compared with US$3.7bn in the whole of last year Nearly all the iPhones exported by Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團) from India went to the US between March and last month, customs data showed, far above last year’s average of 50 percent and a clear sign of Apple Inc’s efforts to bypass high US tariffs imposed on China. The numbers, being reported by Reuters for the first time, show that Apple has realigned its India exports to almost exclusively serve the US market, when previously the devices were more widely distributed to nations including the Netherlands and the Czech Republic. During March to last month, Foxconn, known as Hon Hai Precision Industry
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and the University of Tokyo (UTokyo) yesterday announced the launch of the TSMC-UTokyo Lab to promote advanced semiconductor research, education and talent development. The lab is TSMC’s first laboratory collaboration with a university outside Taiwan, the company said in a statement. The lab would leverage “the extensive knowledge, experience, and creativity” of both institutions, the company said. It is located in the Asano Section of UTokyo’s Hongo, Tokyo, campus and would be managed by UTokyo faculty, guided by directors from UTokyo and TSMC, the company said. TSMC began working with UTokyo in 2019, resulting in 21 research projects,
Quanta Computer Inc (廣達) chairman Barry Lam (林百里) yesterday expressed a downbeat view about the prospects of humanoid robots, given high manufacturing costs and a lack of target customers. Despite rising demand and high expectations for humanoid robots, high research-and-development costs and uncertain profitability remain major concerns, Lam told reporters following the company’s annual shareholders’ meeting in Taoyuan. “Since it seems a bit unworthy to use such high-cost robots to do household chores, I believe robots designed for specific purposes would be more valuable and present a better business opportunity,” Lam said Instead of investing in humanoid robots, Quanta has opted to invest
RSS