Word: sec
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Almost everyone agrees that one of the best defenses against illicit insider trading is to increase the likelihood that offenders will be caught -- and that getting caught will hurt. So far the SEC has been reluctant to use the powers of treble confiscation of illegal profits granted to the agency in 1984. That should change. At the same time, the SEC under Chairman John Shad has shown greater eagerness than it had under his predecessors to pursue insider cases. Says Shad: "If the public believes that a few have privileged information and take advantage of it, it is going...
...most controversial suggestions on how to limit takeovers comes up for SEC hearings next month. It involves a New York Stock Exchange proposal to remove its 60-year-old "one share, one vote" rule, which prohibits the trading of shares in companies that issue both voting and nonvoting common stock. The revision would allow corporate managers and other insiders to keep the voting stock for themselves and to raise money by selling the nonvoting shares to other investors. Critics of the proposal see it merely as a way for managements to make themselves impregnable...
Whether or not anything should be done to restrict takeovers, specific steps can be taken to slow down insider trading. One would be to cut back steeply on the time speculators have to maneuver before a takeover bid is publicly announced. Under current SEC rules, corporate raiders have ten days between the time they acquire 5% of a target stock and the date when a public announcement of their intentions is necessary. It is precisely at such times, when insiders know that something is happening and outsiders are in the dark, that the potential for abuse -- and for profit...
Says Samuel Winer, a former SEC enforcement lawyer now in private practice in Washington: "You can get away with all kinds of discussions and not tell anyone." Winer would require companies to announce publicly whenever preliminary takeover negotiations begin. He would also mandate companies to release much more quickly such important data as earnings projections and year-end financial results...
...Boesky threatened to close with a bang rather than a whimper. Process servers working for both the SEC and the U.S. Attorney's office in Manhattan had delivered subpoenas to at least a dozen important figures in the stock-trading pantheon. The subpoenas did not imply guilt on the part of those who got them, but requested information about any dealings and relationships with Boesky. Among those said to have received the documents...