Part 1
judiciary.senate.gov/print_testimony.cfm?id=2437&wit_id=5485Testimony of Gary J. Aguirre, Esq.
Before the
U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary
Part I
December 5, 2006
Mr. Chairman, Senator Leahy, and Members of the Committee:
Thank you for inviting me to testify today regarding my allegations that senior SEC officials abused their authority in supervising the insider trading investigation of Pequot Capital Management (PCM).
The Favor
My testimony today will focus on a favor. Senior SEC officials gave it. Morgan Stanley and its CEO, John Mack (Mack), accepted it.
The favor was an invisible shield. It was put in place by senior officials within the SEC’s Division of Enforcement. It shielded Mack from an SEC subpoena seeking his testimony and records in the PCM insider trading investigation. That evidence was a critical step in proving whether Mack had tipped PCM’s CEO, Arthur Samberg (Samberg), of General Electric’s (GE) pending acquisition of Heller Financial (Heller). Mack was the only suspect. Blocking the investigation of the only suspect blocked the SEC’s investigation of PCM’s trading in GE-Heller. Without that investigation, the SEC would never be able to even consider the filing of insider trading charges arising out of PCM’s trading in GE and Heller against Mack, Samberg, PCM or anyone else.
The favor had positive effects for some. It cleared the way for Mack’s return on June 30, 2005, as Morgan Stanley’s CEO. Without the favor, Mack would have faced the risk of an SEC lawsuit for insider trading over the next year. Without the favor, Morgan Stanley had two options: (1) it could pass on Mack as its new CEO and look for other candidates or (2) it could hire Mack and take the risk of an SEC insider trading case against him. According to Morgan Stanley’s head of compliance, the risk of an insider trading case against Mack was one Morgan Stanley did not want to accept. The favor made that risk go away.
The timing of the favor was perfect. The search for the source of the GE-Heller tip began in May and began to point to Mack by mid-June. My supervisors authorized me to seek a criminal investigation of Mack and Samberg on June 14. An SEC subpoena for Mack’s testimony and records was the next logical step in the investigation. That should have occurred during the week of June 20. But just then the shield appeared out of nowhere: one of my supervisors blocked the subpoena. Simultaneously, a Wall Street Journal article carried the headline, “Morgan Stanley May Reconsider Mack for CEO.”
So, why would senior SEC officials give such a favor? My immediate supervisor, Branch Chief Robert Hanson, gave me the answer when he first blocked the Mack subpoena: Mack had powerful political connections. He made similar statements on other occasions. I questioned this decision up the chain of command, but only got back silence at first. Mack’s political influence is of course indisputable fact.
If Justice at the SEC has lost her blindfold, the capital markets are in trouble. The SEC regulates the securities markets. Its success “is a bulwark against possible abuses and injustice which, if left unchecked, might jeopardize the strength of our economic institutions.” Few principles are more deeply engrained in Title 17 of the Code of Federal Regulations, which regulates the SEC’s operation, than the mandates obligating the SEC to handle all of its affairs, including the enforcement of the securities laws, with impartiality. No conduct would stray farther from those mandates than a double set of laws: one for the politically well connected and another for everyone else.
After my September 2, 2005, letter informed Chairman Cox of the favor, he directed his Inspector General (IG) to conduct an “investigation” of my allegations. The IG employed a unique investigatory method; his staff interviewed and took evidence from only those senior SEC officials who were the subject of my charges. The IG staff never contacted me. Not surprisingly, those charged with misconduct offered little evidence against themselves. The IG was therefore duty bound to find them blameless. This kind of an investigation has a name; it is called a “whitewash.”
After your Committee and the Finance Committee began their own inquiry, the SEC came up with Plan B. It directed its IG to conduct a new “investigation” and its Enforcement Division to take Mack’s testimony. The same IG who did the first whitewash would do the new one. The same senior officials who blocked Mack’s testimony fourteen months earlier would take his testimony.
Both aspects of Plan B lack the same element as the original decision to block Mack’s testimony: integrity. How hard would the IG look for evidence that Mack got a favor, when that same evidence would prove his first investigation was a whitewash? How hard would senior SEC officials search for clues that Mack tipped Samberg when those same clues would prove their misconduct fourteen months earlier? The outcome of the “reopened” IG investigation and the Mack testimony were scripted and choreographed before they began. When the IG finds Enforcement gave no favor to Mack, he will also validate his first investigation. When senior Enforcement officials “cleared” Mack last October, they effectively did the same for themselves.
Still, by taking Mack’s testimony, the SEC conceded the necessity of this step. The SEC claims it was just following “established procedures” when it recently reversed its June 2005 decision and then took Mack’s testimony. Would not those same “established procedures” call for Mack’s testimony to be taken in June 2005 when it was originally sought by the staff person heading the investigation? Or did some new evidence recently surface? If so, what was that evidence? How was it overlooked before? Further, as discussed below, why would the SEC wait until two critical statutes of limitations had expired before taking Mack’s testimony?
The SEC Favor to Mack Was No Favor to the Nation’s Capital Markets
When senior SEC officials blocked the Mack subpoena, they derailed an investigation of suspected insider trading involving one of the world’s largest investment banks and, at that time, the world’s largest hedge fund. That focus on investment banks and hedge funds touched on a type of insider trading with global dimensions. In June 2005, the Federal Services Authority (“FSA”), the United Kingdom’s counterpart to the SEC, recognized an “institutionalized” form of insider trading involving investment banks and hedge funds. The FSA suspected that investment banks were giving illegal tips of pending mergers and acquisitions to their best hedge fund customers in return for lucrative hedge fund business. More recently, the FSA, has “uncovered signs of insider dealing at almost a third of British M&A deals, with possible culprits including traders at hedge funds and investment banks.”
The same patterns have emerged in the US. Evidence taken by your Committee in September indicated possible insider trading in advance of forty-one percent of the US mergers and acquisitions over a billion dollars in size during a recent one year period.
So how is the SEC doing in catching and civilly prosecuting hedge funds who engage in insider trading? How many cases has the SEC filed against hedge funds for insider trading? What are the tangible results of those cases? That information is not readily available. It is true that the SEC frequently issues statistics to bolster its image as the cop on the street, strolling along with a vigilant eye on both hedge funds and insider trading. According to its statistics, the SEC has brought more than 300 insider trading cases over the past five years and some 90 cases against hedge funds since 1999. Yet, these two statistics conceal a disturbing fact: the SEC’s actual record of enforcing insider trading laws against hedge funds.
What is that record? Aside from the PIPE cases, the SEC has recovered approximately $110,000 from hedge funds and their principals for all other types of insider trading. This includes trading on illegal tips before public announcements of any of the following events: mergers, acquisitions, negative and positive earnings surprises, government investigations (e.g., FDA approval or withdrawal of approval), CEO hirings or firings, or anything else that could affect the value of a public company. How could this be? The explanation is quite simple: the SEC has brought a total of six cases for insider trading against hedge funds.
Three of those cases involve a cookie cutter type of insider trading: the violator shorts a public company in advance of an announcement of a Private Investment in Public Entities (PIPE). The SEC’s concentration of its resources on PIPE insider trading cases is curious. The PIPE market is relatively small: $20 billion in 2005. By comparison, the merger and acquisition market was $1.46 trillion over a recent twelve month period. Put differently, the PIPE market is 1.4% of the merger and acquisition market. So why do half the SEC insider trading cases against hedge funds arise out of PIPE transactions? One obvious answer: the cases are easier to prove. The facts are relatively simple and follow a cookie cutter fact pattern. Also, somebody did much of the spade work for the SEC. The cop on the street—the SEC—did not detect the PIPE insider trading. Rather, it was detected by a $100 billion mutual fund and the evidence was then handed over to the SEC.
The SEC has brought three and only three cases against hedge funds or their principals for all other types of insider trading: SEC v. Kornman, SEC v. Tom, and SEC v. Obus. In two of those cases, Kornman and Tom, the SEC sued the principals of two mini hedge funds. In Kornman, the illegal profits were $142,000; the SEC has recovered nothing. In Tom, the illegal profits were $785,330 dollars; the SEC has recovered $110,000 from marginal defendants, but nothing from Tom. In Obus, the SEC sued a mid-sized hedge fund, its principal and two others. It has recovered nothing so far. The only remarkable feature of Obus was the length of the investigation: it took the SEC at least four years to file the case (not prove a case) against a hedge fund principal who repeatedly confessed his transgression to strangers. To sum up, aside from the PIPE cases, SEC efforts to enforce the insider trading laws against hedge funds who engage in insider trading come to this: two cases against the principals of two tiny hedge funds, one case against a mid-sized hedge fund, and a total of $110,000 recovered.
To put in perspective the SEC’s $110,000 recovery, it must be contrasted with the scale of illegal insider trading by hedge funds. It is doubtful that anyone has an accurate grasp of the total profits hedge funds derive from all types of insider trading. But some broad brush strokes may be put to the canvas in one area: insider trading profits by hedge funds related to mergers and acquisitions. The study commissioned by The New York Times found evidence of insider trading in advance of 41% of the largest US mergers and acquisitions. The total dollar volume of US mergers and acquisitions was $1.46 trillion over a recent one-year period. The FSA believes that much of this illegal trading is done by hedge funds. Likewise, four of the witnesses who testified before your Committee on September 26, 2006, expressed a similar view. One of the witnesses, Professor John Coffee, put it this way:
[T]he more likely scenario is that information is leaked by their staffs [buy out and private equity firms] and by investment bankers to hedge funds and other active traders. These leaks are, however, not gratuitous; they are predictably in return for some likely quid pro quo. As hedge funds have come to dominate trading, they are often paying above market brokerage commissions, at least in comparison to other institutional investors. The funds paying these above-market commissions expect many things in return: …hints about pending deals.
All this suggests that hedge funds likely derive illegal profits from insider trading relating to mergers and acquisitions in the billions of dollars. The SEC’s track record—its recovery of $110,000—is not likely much of a deterrent.
And then there was the PCM investigation. It involved eighteen referrals by Self-Regulatory Organizations (SROs) and one insider trading matter uncovered by staff. In the GE-Heller trades, PCM made a profit of $18 million from suspected insider trading. In the Microsoft trades, PCM made a profit of $12 million from suspected insider trading. All but two of the remaining seventeen matters involved suspected illegal profits in excess of $1 million. That investigation had begun to focus on the flow of illegal information from investment banks to PCM in March 2005. That was months before the FSA expressed its concerns about “institutionalized insider trading” in the U.K. and more than a year before The New York Times raised the question whether the same thing was happening in the US.
The SEC’s handling of PCM’s suspected insider trading in GE-Heller fits the pattern of its overall handling of insider trading cases. It goes for the low hanging fruit, amateur traders who make stupid mistakes when they trade on illegal tips, but not the large, sophisticated hedge funds who do not make easy statistics. The SEC vigorously pursued an insider trading case against a low level GE executive and a Taiwanese Kung Fu instructor who split a $157,000 profit derived from trading Heller options. The Department of Justice jumped in and exacted a guilty plea from one of the participants. The District Court sentenced him to fifteen months in prison.
The NYSE likely highlighted PCM’s trading to the SEC within months of PCM’s July 2001 trades. The minimum SEC inquiry into PCM’s trading in Heller would have raised one red flag after another. Simply checking PCM’s trading in Heller for July 2001 would have revealed a $17 million profit, not the $5.97 million the NYSE found. Scratching a tad deeper would have revealed that PCM had bought more Heller stock ($44 million worth) than any individual or institution in the country during the four weeks before the announcement. Scratching a little deeper would have revealed that PCM had also sold shorted $36 million in GE stock, thereby positioning itself for the likely dip in GE’s stock price when the tender offer was announced, which dip in fact occurred. The inescapable inference from these facts was that someone at PCM had a strong belief that GE would acquire Heller. By that point, the SEC would have to ask PCM one simple question: Why did you bet $80 million that GE would acquire Heller? That question would not be addressed to PCM and its CEO for another four years.
To sum up, the PCM investigation had focused on a new type of insider trading of global dimensions, “institutionalized insider trading.” The investment bank under investigation was the third largest in the world at the time. The hedge fund was the largest in the world at the time and was suspected of routinely engaging in insider trading. Given the SEC’s failure to look at this area before, it was critical to the capital markets that the investigation be thorough. Instead, senior Enforcement officials halted the investigation by blocking the issuance of any subpoenas to the only suspected tipper.
But it gets worse. The suspected tipper was the incoming CEO of the investment bank. The suspected tippee was the CEO of the hedge fund. If those at the top of these pyramids believe that insider trading is an acceptable business risk, their subordinates—everyone else in both companies—will not likely have higher standards. It is hard to imagine how the SEC could have given a favor more damaging to the capital markets.
The Status of the PCM Insider Trading by June 2005
The investigations of Samberg’s and Mack’s roles as the possible tippee and tipper in the GE-Heller matter were interdependent in two ways. First, as discussed below, the circumstances surrounding Samberg’s trading in GE and Heller in July 2001 defined the profile of the person who likely tipped him. Only Mack fit the profile. Second, when senior SEC officials blocked the subpoena for the only person who met the tipper’s profile, they rang the death knell on proving the case against Samberg and PCM. No insider trading case can be proved without establishing the source of the tip.
PCM’s History of Suspected Insider Trading
There were multiple reasons in 2005 to scrutinize Samberg’s and PCM’s trading over the prior few years for the use of illegal tips. Market surveillance officials of the NYSE told me that PCM and two other hedge funds, which they named, had most often been the subject of insider trading referrals to the SEC in recent years. One of those officials put it this way: “PCM was just too lucky.” In the fall of 2004, I had located thirteen other insider trading matters which SROs had referred or highlighted to the SEC over the prior three years involving PCM. None had been investigated. SROs referred another four insider trading matters over the next few months. In response to an SEC subpoena, PCM produced records of yet other SRO referrals. The SEC’s New York District Office was also conducting a separate investigation of PCM for possible insider trading arising out of a PIPE transaction. Independently, Hilton Foster (Foster), perhaps the most experienced SEC attorney at conducting insider trading investigations, told me that he had investigated PCM a decade earlier and suspected Samberg and PCM were “serial inside traders.”
There was also the money PCM paid to its brokers-dealers: $226 million during the twelve month period in which it did the GE-Heller trades. PCM paid an “average commission rate” to its brokers of five cents a share. These trades could have been executed for as little as a penny a share electronically. PCM also paid many more millions in fees to its prime brokers. In return for these fees, hedge funds in general, and PCM in particular, received favors and information. The key question is where the broker-dealers drew the line on the type of favors and information they gave PCM and where PCM drew the line in receiving them.
Then there was the obvious good-twin bad-twin comparison between PCM and Andor Capital Management (Andor). Andor was formed in September 2001 when PCM cofounders, Samberg and Daniel Benton (Benton), split up PCM’s employees and its $15 billion in assets. Samberg would continue with PCM, but with half the assets to manage. Andor would go its separate way, with the other $7.5 billion to manage. I could find few SRO referrals of Andor in comparison with PCM from 2001 through 2005. I also asked Eric Ribelin (Ribelin), a branch chief in the SEC’s Office of Market Surveillance, if he could get an exact number of the referrals on Andor. Ribelin responded: “The referrals are by issuer, not by account that traded, so there is no electronic way to key on it. Put it this way, before you mentioned Andor I’d never heard the name. I’ve seen and heard Pequot’s name for years in referrals and in conversations with SROs.”
Finally, Samberg sought nonpublic information on another company shortly before he was suspected of obtaining the Heller tip from Mack. In April 2001, Samberg hired David Zilkha out of Microsoft, where he was employed as a product manager. The emails between Samberg and Zilkha show Zilkha obtaining nonpublic information from his contacts at Microsoft, on some occasions while Zilkha was still working at Microsoft, and passing it along to Samberg. When I left the SEC, gaps in the evidence prevented Enforcement from using these emails as a basis for a separate insider trading case against PCM and Samberg. However, we saw these emails as a window into how Samberg operated and thus they provided a clue to the mystery why he bet $80 million in July 2001 that GE would acquire Heller without any data supporting his bet.
Samberg began pumping Zilkha for information almost two months before he left Microsoft. Samberg’s first email to Zilkha on February 28, 2001, asked: “Do you have any current view [on Microsoft] that could be helpful? Might as well pick your brain before you go on the payroll!!” The reply did not appear to pass along material nonpublic information.
Later, Samberg’s emails became more direct. On April 30, after Zilkha had joined PCM, Samberg emailed Zilkha, asking: “those [MSFT] contacts have any views on the direct tv—Murdoch—rumored msft possible deal?” This email shows Samberg using Zilkha to confirm —through his Microsoft contacts—whether the rumor was true that Microsoft would participate in a joint acquisition of DIRECTV.
In another email, Zilkha reported back:
Just spoke to one of my buds in the company [Microsoft]. He had 2 data points.
1) Orlando Ayala, in charge of sales worldwide, told managers this week that the quarter looks to end on a strong note.
2) Bob McDowell, in charge of Microsoft Consulting, told my friend that MCS was having a blow out quarter.
I asked about negative data points and he said he hadn’t heard of any.
In another email, Samberg directed Zilkha that information obtained from Zilkha’s contacts within Microsoft should not be shared with an analyst. Zilkha and Samberg had this edited exchange about Microsoft’s expected earnings:
Zilkha: I told Sherlund [an analyst] on the call that MSFT [Microsoft ticker symbol] was anticipating beating earnings for the Q as of last Thursday. He asked if me whether he could put out a note talking up MSFT. I told him I’d let him know tomorrow after I heard back from my contact--and had gotten your take on what we would like we’d like him to do.
Samberg: As to msft, I don’t want to be associated with anything Sherlund [stock analyst] does. If, after talking to you he feels comfortable with the stock, fine, but we absolutely should not be relaying info to him about what you had learned via contacts within the company.
Here is another Samberg-Zilkha exchange, while Zilkha was still employed by Microsoft, on April 7:
Samberg: I own some msft on the win2000 cycle, despite recurring indications from knowledgeable people that the company will either preannounce or take guidance down. Any tidbits you care to lob in would be appreciated.
Zilkha: I will get back to you on MSFT ASAP.
Zilkha did not reply by email, at least in no email that Enforcement staff could find, so there was no proof what he told Samberg. However, between April 9 and 11, Samberg bought 30,000 options contracts on the assumption that Microsoft would beat its earnings, the reverse of his belief stated in his email. On April 20, Microsoft did in fact beat its earnings. Samberg made a $12 million profit on his April 9-11 option trades.
On April 23, Zilkha’s first day at PCM, Samberg sent him an email: “I shouldn’t say this, but you have probably paid for yourself already!” Samberg emailed two other PCM executives on the same day: “our new guy, david zilkha [sic], is in ct today. check [sic] him out. He’s already got a great p&l [profit and loss] on his msft input.” Zilkha had earned his “great p&l” with PCM while still an employee of Microsoft.
In general, the Samberg-Zilkha emails were anomalous. The evidence suggests two reasons. First, Samberg likely used instant messaging when he did not wish to leave a trail, which would have been the case if he was soliciting or receiving material nonpublic information. Instant messaging left no telltale image in any server or computer. Second, Samberg was under pressure to perform after April 2001, when his partner announced he intended to leave with half of PCM’s assets and thus Samberg may have taken greater risks than usual.
Samberg’s Testimony Advanced the Investigation of PCM’s Trading in GE and Heller
The first subpoenas to PCM were issued in early February 2005. In April and May, PCM began producing significant volumes of its records. I took Samberg’s testimony in early May and again in early June 2005. By early June 2005, the evidence suggested that Samberg had relied on an illegal tip in directing PCM’s trades in GE and Heller. I summarized that evidence in my email of June 27, 2005, to Ribelin, who attended both sessions of Samberg’s testimony, Assistant Director Mark Kreitman (Kreitman), and Hanson.
(cont'd)