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In April 2014, I posted that:
In my new book, Insider Trading Law and Policy
Suppose, for example, that Tipper tells Tippee #1 who tells Tippee #2 who trades. Can Tippee #2 be held liable? If the preconditions of tipping liability are satisfied, there is nothing in Dirks to foreclose such liability. Donald Langevoort, for example, suggests that liability in tipping chain cases should require a three-part showing: “each person in the chain (1) was given the information expressly for the purpose of facilitating trading based on inside information, (2) knew that the information was material and nonpublic, and (3) knew or had reason to know that it came to him as a result of some breach of duty by an insider.” He goes on to note, however, that tipping chain cases—“albeit without any substantial judicial discussion of the underlying issue”—generally have imposed liability “simply on a showing that the person came into possession of information that he knew was material and nonpublic and which he knew or had reason to know was obtained via a breach of fiduciary duty by an insider.”
In Obus, for example, the Second Circuit opined that:
A tipper will be liable if he tips material non-public information, in breach of a fiduciary duty, to someone he knows will likely (1) trade on the information or (2) disseminate the information further for the first tippee’s own benefit. The first tippee must both know or have reason to know that the information was obtained and transmitted through a breach and intentionally or recklessly tip the information further for her own benefit. The final tippee must both know or have reason to know that the information was obtained through a breach and trade while in knowing possession of the information.[1]
[1]Obus, 693 F.3d at 288. The court further explained that the tippee could be held liable on the basis of “conscious avoidance,” citing SEC v. Musella, 678 F. Supp. 1060, 1063 (S.D.N.Y.1988), for the proposition that Dirks was “satisfied where the defendants, tippees at the end of a chain, ‘did not ask [about the source of information] because they did not want to know.’ ” Obus, 693 F.3d at 288–89.
As the WSJ reported on Monday, this issue is now on appeal before the Second Circuit:
The appeal is being pursued by Todd Newman and Anthony Chiasson, two portfolio managers whose 2012 insider-trading convictions were a significant victory for prosecutors. ...
The original trial judge told jurors that Messrs. Chiasson and Newman could be convicted of insider trading even if they hadn't known that the person who leaked the information had done so in return for a "personal benefit."
Lawyers for Messrs. Newman and Chiasson say prosecutors must show that their clients knew the tippers were somehow compensated for the tips and that the judge's instruction was erroneous. The inside tips on which the pair traded were conveyed through a network of analysts before reaching analysts who worked for Messrs. Chiasson and Newman, the lawyers said in court documents. Their clients didn't seek out or knowingly use inside information, they said.
Prosecutors have said they need only show that people who used the tips were aware the tipper disclosed the nonpublic information in breach of a fiduciary duty when they traded on it.
Even if the instruction was erroneous, the jury would have concluded the two men inferred the information was given in exchange for a reward, prosecutors said in court documents.
Given the phrasing of the Obus standard, the jury instruction may well hold up on appeal. On the other hand, the seminal Dirks v. SEC decision makes clear that the requisite breach of fiduciary duty is one in which the tipper gets a personal benefit in return for the tip, so shouldn't the personal benefit requirement be made explicit?
The problem here is that the Obus case erroneously phrased the Dirks standard. According to the Second Circuit:
The [Supreme] Court held that a tipper like the analyst in Dirks is liable if the tipper breached a fiduciary duty by tipping material non-public information, had the requisite scienter (to be discussed momentarily) when he gave the tip, and personally benefited from the tip. Id. at 660–62, 103 S.Ct. 3255. Personal benefit to the tipper is broadly defined: it includes not only “pecuniary gain,” such as a cut of the take or a gratuity from the tippee, but also a “reputational benefit” or the benefit one would obtain from simply “mak[ing] a gift of confidential information to a trading relative or friend.” Id. at 663–64, 103 S.Ct. 3255. When an unlawful tip occurs, the tippee is also liable if he knows or should know that the information was received from one who breached a fiduciary duty (such as an insider or a misappropriator) and the tippee trades or tips for personal benefit with the requisite scienter. See id. at 660, 103 S.Ct. 3255.
The highlighted text is the source of the problem. It suggested that the personal benefit and fiduciary duty requirements are separate. Under Dirks, however, they are one and the same:
In determining whether a tippee is under an obligation to disclose or abstain, it thus is necessary to determine whether the insider's “tip” constituted a breach of the insider's fiduciary duty. ... [The] test is whether the insider personally will benefit, directly or indirectly, from his disclosure. Absent some personal gain, there has been no breach of duty to stockholders. And absent a breach by the insider, there is no derivative breach.
463 U.S. at 661-62. In other words, no personal benefit, no breach. Therefore, it seems to me, the jury should have been instructed that the prosecution has to prove that the tippees knew of recklessly avoided knowing that the tipper got a personal benefit.
Yesterday, the Second Circuit did the right thing and reversed the convictions:
We agree that the jury instruction was erroneous because we conclude that, in order to sustain a conviction for insider trading, the Government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the tippee knew that an insider disclosed confidential information and that he did so in exchange for a personal benefit. Moreover, we hold that the evidence was insufficient to sustain a guilty verdict against Newman and Chiasson for two reasons. First, the Government’s evidence of any personal benefit received by the alleged insiders was insufficient to establish the tipper liability from which defendants’ purported tippee liability would derive. Second, even assuming that the scant evidence offered on the issue of personal benefit was sufficient, which we conclude it was not, the Government presented no evidence that Newman and Chiasson knew that they were trading on information obtained from insiders in violation of those insiders’ fiduciary duties.
In doing so, the Court offered up a very useful (and accurate summary) of the state of the law:
Although this Court has been accused of being “somewhat Delphic” in our discussion of what is required to demonstrate tippee liability, United States v. Whitman, 904 F. Supp. 2d 363, 371 n.6 (S.D.N.Y. 2012), the Supreme Court was quite clear in Dirks. First, the tippee’s liability derives only from the tipper’s breach of a fiduciary duty, not from trading on material, non‐public information. See Chiarella, 445 U.S. at 233 (noting that there is no “general duty between all participants in market transactions to forgo actions based on material, nonpublic information”). Second, the corporate insider has committed no breach of fiduciary duty unless he receives a personal benefit in exchange for the disclosure. Third, even in the presence of a tipper’s breach, a tippee is liable only if he knows or should have known of the breach.
Then the court explained that the government's view of personal benefit was much too broad:
We have observed that “[p]ersonal benefit is broadly defined to include not only pecuniary gain, but also, inter alia, any reputational benefit that will translate into future earnings and the benefit one would obtain from simply making a gift of confidential information to a trading relative or friend.” Jiau, 734 F. 3d at 153 (internal citations, alterations, and quotation marks deleted). This standard, although permissive, does not suggest that the Government may prove the receipt of a personal benefit by the mere fact of a friendship, particularly of a casual or social nature. If that were true, and the Government was allowed to meet its burden by proving that two individuals were alumni of the same school or attended the same church, the personal benefit requirement would be a nullity.
As the WSJ opined, this reversal finally put a judicial cap on SDNY US Attorney Preet Bharara's quest to expand the definition of insider trading to capture virtually every information asymmetry and the virtual presumption of guilt his press releases and news conferences conveyed:
No evidence. None. Yet the two defendants have had to endure years of public trial and threat of prison. Mr. Bharara should apologize for bringing the case.
The abusive prosecution stems from the habit of federal enforcers—at the Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission—to define insider trading by ever greater degrees of separation from the source of the insider knowledge. Prosecutors want to charge anyone who trades on any nonpublic information with a crime. But Messrs. Newman and Chiasson were “three and four levels removed from the inside tipper, respectively,” wrote Judge Parker, and “there was no evidence that either was aware of the source of the inside information.”
Bharara's crusade has destroyed lives and ruined businesses by deploying highly aggressive "interpretations" of the law that lacked a firm foundation in existing law and investigatory/prosecutorial techniques better suited to a mob murder conspiracy case than financial markets.
Apologize hell. He should be fired.
Brian Quinn has a post raising two important questions about proxy access. First, is he right that it is a "laudable goal." Not in my humble opinion. See my book, Corporate Governance after the Financial Crisis
… because proxy access’ effect will be to increase the number of short slates, albeit to an uncertain extent, its impact on corporate governance likely will be analogous to that of cumulative voting. Both result in divided boards representing differing constituencies. Experience with cumulative voting suggests that adversarial relations between the majority block and the minority of shareholder nominees commonly dominate such divided boards.
The likely effects of proxy access therefore will not be better governance. It is more likely to be an increase in interpersonal conflict (as opposed to the more useful cognitive conflict). There probably will be a reduction in the trust-based relationships that are the foundation of effective board decision making. There may also be an increase in the use by the majority of pre-meeting caucuses and a reduction in information flows to the board as a whole. Not surprisingly, early research suggests that proxy access reduces shareholder wealth.
You'll need to buy the whole book for the detailed argument, of course.
In any case, on to the second question posed by Quinn's post: Why is a leading activist shareholder proponent of proxy access requesting boards to adopt a proxy access bylaw instead of simply using a Rule 14a-8 shareholder proposal to directly amend the bylaws? Indeed, I have often wondered why shareholder activists don't make more use of their power to initiate bylaw amendments.
In my book, Corporate Governance after the Financial Crisis
... the costs of institutional investor activism likely outweigh any benefits such activism may confer with respect to redressing the principal-agent problem. Even if one assumes that the cost-benefit analysis comes out the other way around, however, institutional investor activism does not solve the principal-agent problem but rather merely relocates its locus.
The vast majority of large institutional investors manage the pooled savings of small individual investors. From a governance perspective, there is little to distinguish such institutions from corporations. The holders of investment company shares, for example, have no more control over the election of company trustees than do retail investors over the election of corporate directors. Accordingly, fund shareholders exhibit the same rational apathy as corporate shareholders. ... Nor do the holders of such shares have any greater access to information about their holdings, or ability to monitor those who manage their holdings, than do corporate shareholders. Although an individual investor can always abide by the Wall Street Rule with respect to corporate stock, moreover, he cannot do so with respect to such investments as an involuntary, contributory pension plan.
For beneficiaries of union and state and local government employee pension funds, the problem is particularly pronounced. As we have seen, those who manage such funds may often put their personal or political agendas ahead of the interests of the fund’s beneficiaries. Accordingly, it is not particularly surprising that pension funds subject to direct political control tend to have poor financial results.
As an op-ed by Andrew Biggs in today's WSJ makes clear, public pension funds suffer from agency cost problems that are at least as severe as those of the corporations excoriated by activist funds:
State and local pension plans invest roughly twice as much in risky assets as would a prudent individual saving for retirement. ...
... Calpers holds about 75% of its portfolio in stocks and other risky assets, such as real estate, private equity and, until recently, hedge funds, despite offering benefits that, unlike IRAs or 401(k)s, it guarantees against market risk. Most other states are little different: Illinois holds 75% in risky assets; the Texas teachers’ plan holds 81%; the New York state and local plan 72%; Pennsylvania 82%; New Mexico 85%. ...
Public pensions are addicted to risk and, because they are effectively “too big to fail,” require an intervention.
In addition to holding excessively risky portfoloios, of course, public pension funds notoriously are too optomistic in their actuarial assumptions:
While Americans are typically earning less than 1 percent interest on their savings accounts and watching their 401(k) balances yo-yo along with the stock market, most public pension funds are still betting they will earn annual returns of 7 to 8 percent over the long haul, a practice that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg recently called “indefensible.” ...
“The actuary is supposedly going to lower the assumed reinvestment rate from an absolutely hysterical, laughable 8 percent to a totally indefensible 7 or 7.5 percent,” Mr. Bloomberg said during a trip to Albany in late February. “If I can give you one piece of financial advice: If somebody offers you a guaranteed 7 percent on your money for the rest of your life, you take it and just make sure the guy’s name is not Madoff.”
It's long past time that publc pension funds take a lead from Matthew 7:3-5, and remove the log from their own eyes before going after corporate splinters.
