M & A Law Prof Blog

Editor: Brian JM Quinn
Boston College Law School

Monday, July 1, 2013

Your boyfriend's a bum

Maybe it's just me, but there have got to be other fish in the sea.  You want my advice? Don't marry him, dump him. He's a bum.

On July 1, 2013, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced that it charged a former officer of The Dow Chemical Company (Dow), his long-time friend, and a broker with insider trading that generated more than $1 million in illicit profits based on confidential information ahead of Dow's acquisition of Rohm & Haas Co. (Rohm)....

The SEC's complaint alleges that [Mack] Murrell, who was the Vice President of Information Systems for Dow, obtained confidential details about the acquisition of Rohm from his then live-in girlfriend, now wife, who was the administrative assistant to Dow's Chief Financial Officer at the time. Murrell's girlfriend knew about and worked on the pending acquisition. The complaint alleges that the day after learning from his girlfriend of a special Board meeting at which the Rohm acquisition was discussed, Murrell tipped his long-time friend [David] Teekell during a telephone call. Immediately following the telephone call, Teekell called [Charles] Adams, his broker at Raymond James, and tipped him.

The complaint further alleges that the next business day after learning of the pending acquisition, Teekell and Adams began purchasing common stock and call options in Rohm. In addition to purchasing call options in his own account, Adams purchased stock in two discretionary customer accounts. Teekell's and Adams' purchases continued until the day before the acquisition announcement on July 10, 2008, when the price of Rohm stock jumped 64 percent. Teekell made an illicit profit of $534,526 and Adams and his discretionary customers made illicit profits of $107,043 through the insider trading. Raymond James made illicit profits of $373,497 when Teekell and Adams decided not to keep certain Rohm options that Adams had purchased in Teekell's account.

Here. Call options...again with the call options...sheesh.

-bjmq

 

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/mergers/2013/07/your-boyfriends-a-bum.html

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Comments

Nice going Mack. Boy what a good guy he is and he definitely can be trusted. Will she dump him? Let us know what happens. Thanks for the interesting but sad post.

Posted by: Steven J Fromm | Jul 9, 2013 5:58:28 AM

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