Swiss Charge Man With Insider Trading on Bank Pal’s M&A Tips

(Bloomberg) — A Swiss man was charged with insider trading after allegedly making millions of francs from merger tips shared by an investment banker friend. 

The man, who worked as a consultant, cashed in on his connection with the banker developed over 15 years to exploit “confidential and price sensitive information about ongoing or planned takeovers,” the Office of the Attorney General said in a statement on Tuesday. 

The authority said the man netted 10.6 million Swiss francs ($11.3 million) in profits from four out of five sets of trades between 2018 and 2020. The Swiss authority said that he also lost about 1.6 million francs in the other instance, after betting on a deal that failed to materialize.

Switzerland has traditionally been a much softer touch in prosecuting insider trading than the US or UK and it was only made a crime in the country in 1988. A Swiss businessman convicted of insider trading in 2021 was only given a suspended sentence. 

Responsibility for prosecuting insider trading was handed to federal authorities from the Swiss cantons more than a decade ago, in part to allow the better-equipped federal prosecutors to team up with Finma, Switzerland’s financial regulator, to tackle increasingly sophisticated insider trading cases.

The Swiss AG’s office didn’t give the name of the accused or the bank where his tipster worked, as is normal in Swiss proceedings. It has passed on responsibility for the case to the Swiss federal court which has yet to announce a trial date. Only then, closer to the trial, will the bank’s name become known.

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