The FBI and the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) are investigating possible insider trading involving billionaire investor Carl Icahn, golfer Phil Mickelson and Las Vegas gambler William Walters, a source familiar with the matter said.
US federal investigators are looking into whether Mickelson and Walters may have traded illegally on private information provided by Icahn about his investments in public corporations, the source told reporters, confirming reports on Friday.
Icahn, a legendary activist investor, told reporters that he was unaware of any investigation and said that his firm always followed the law. He acknowledged a business relationship with Walters, but said that he did not know Mickelson personally.
Photo: Reuters
“I am very proud of my 50-year unblemished record and have never given out insider information,” he said.
Walters and Mickelson play golf together, the source said.
The investigation began three years ago according to the source. It is the latest to emerge from a multi-year crackdown on insider trading by US authorities.
The investigation centers on suspicious trades in Clorox Co by Walters and Mickelson, as Icahn was trying for access to the board of the consumer products company in 2011, the New York Times reported, citing people briefed on the probe.
Icahn had accumulated a 9.1 percent stake in Clorox in February 2011. In July, he made an offer for the company that valued it at more than US$10 billion and sent its stock soaring.
Investigators were also looking into trades that Mickelson and Walters made related to Dean Foods Co, the Journal cited the people as saying. The New York Times cited people briefed on the investigation as saying that in that particular case, investigators are looking into trades placed in or around 2012, just before the company announced quarterly results.
Those trades appeared to have no connection to Icahn, the newspaper added. Icahn said he had never purchased shares nor been involved with Dean.
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan are handling the inquiry in conjunction with the FBI and the SEC, the New York Times reported. Since August 2009, Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara’s office has convicted 81 people of insider trading, either at trial or via guilty pleas, with no acquittals.
The current investigation made little headway initially, the Times reported. Investigators are searching telephone records, seeking to determine whether Icahn had spoken to Walters before the trades, the Times cited anonymous people briefed on the probe as saying.
And about a year ago, FBI officials approached Mickelson at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, asking the celebrity golfer to discuss his trading, the Times cited its sources as saying.
Icahn, a prolific tweeter and vocal critic of some of America’s largest corporations, habitually broadcasts his thoughts on corporations and, occasionally, stock positions he has taken. The billionaire took to Twitter earlier this year when he pushed Apple Inc’s board to expand the iPhone maker’s buyback program, and several times tweeted when he had increased his position in the tech company.
During a campaign to get eBay Inc to hive off its fast-growing PayPal division, he openly criticized the Internet retail giant’s board. The activist investor has tweeted just once in the past three weeks.
Even if Icahn did leak information about his plans regarding Clorox, it may not necessarily have violated the law. Insider trading regulations prohibit trading based on material, nonpublic information obtained from someone who breached a fiduciary or confidentiality duty by disclosing it.
As a non-board member, Icahn owed no duty to Clorox shareholders. It is possible, though by no means definite, that Icahn owed a confidentiality duty to his own shareholders.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts