US charges London bankers
• Relatively new advisory banks drawn into scandal after US prosecutors say Benjamin Taylor and Darina Windsor generated millions in illicit profits
Two London investment bankers were charged in the US with selling information about deals as part of a “large-scale, international insider trading ring”.
Two London investment bankers were charged in the US with selling information about pending deals as part of a “largescale, international insider trading ring” that, prosecutors claim, generated tens of millions of dollars in illicit profits.
The charges were unsealed on Monday in New York against Benjamin Taylor and Darina Windsor, who both worked for global investment banks with offices in London and Manhattan. The US did not identify the banks in the indictment but Moelis & Co confirmed Taylor had worked at the firm.
Windsor worked at Centerview Partners in London, according to the UK Financial Conduct Authority’s register.
That draws two relatively new advisory banks — Moelis founded in 2007 and Centerview in 2006 — into a widening insider trading scandal.
According to the indictment, Taylor and Windsor were involved in a romantic relationship and shared a London flat. They called each other “Pops” and “Popsy” in e-mails, prosecutors said.
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have been probing a group of stock pickers in Europe and the Middle East who have made tens of millions of dollars trading ahead of takeover reports or merger announcements. Some of the information Taylor and Windsor allegedly stole was leaked to the media by a securities trader who profited when it was published.
Despite an earlier crackdown on insider trading that won convictions of dozens of bankers, traders and corporate executives, the new charges indicate that the practice continues unabated on Wall Street.
Last week Goldman Sachs Group investment banker Bryan Cohen was arrested in New York for allegedly passing confidential information to a securities trader in Switzerland.
Over more than five years, from late 2012 to early 2018, Taylor and Windsor allegedly sold information they gleaned at work on 22 companies to two middlemen who are not identified in the September 9 indictment. Taylor and Windsor got more than $1m in benefits, including cash, luxury watches and expensive clothes, according to the government.
The middlemen then passed the tips to securities traders, who would profit before the information became public, according to prosecutors.
INSIDE INFORMATION
Taylor left his bank in 2015 and Windsor was fired in 2016, according to the indictment. But Taylor continued getting inside information from people in at least one investment bank, prosecutors said.
A spokesperson for Manhattan US attorney Geoffrey Berman, had no immediate comment on whether Taylor and Windsor are under arrest. Information about their lawyers was not immediately available.
“We are appalled that a former junior employee violated the core values that are most important to our firm,” a Moelis spokesperson said.
“We have co-operated fully with law enforcement authorities since being made aware of the allegations.”
Windsor was fired for misconduct from Centerview’s London office, where she was a junior employee nearly four years ago, a spokesperson for the firm said. “We are co-operating with the authorities on this matter,” she said. “Maintaining our clients’ confidentiality is paramount and something we are focused on every day.”
A spokesperson for Credit Suisse declined to comment. The Financial Conduct Authority register shows Taylor worked at Credit Suisse for less than a year during the indictment period, but there was no suggestion in the filing that he leaked price-sensitive information while there.
Windsor and Taylor exchanged information in cryptic messages. For example, in October 2012 Windsor sent an e-mail to Taylor entitled, “Once upon a time, there was a Pops searching for Truffles in the Forest”, according to the indictment. Attached to the e-mail was confidential information relating to Onyx Pharmaceuticals, which was acquired by Amgen in 2013 for $8.5bn.
Taylor and his two middlemen used encrypted messaging apps and unregistered burner phones to communicate and arrange meetings, the US said. Taylor provided the confidential information and documents to the middlemen in person, and they in turn often met face-toface with securities traders as well to pass on the information.
TAKEOVER TARGET
A Swiss-based securities trader would occasionally leak the information about potential acquisitions to a journalist and made more than $1m one time when news got published that a company was a takeover target, according to the indictment.
It was not clear from the court filing whether the securities trader in Switzerland was the same one referred to in the charges against the Goldman Sachs banker last week.
Windsor created a spreadsheet in 2013 to forecast how the proceeds would be split between her, Taylor and the securities trader in Switzerland, prosecutors said.
Of the 22 companies in the indictment, two were clients of Moelis and 13 were clients of the bank where Windsor worked. The companies include Metals USA Holdings, AmerisourceBergen, Amgen, Merck, InterMune, Hyperion Therapeutics, Celgene, Solera Holdings and Johnson Controls International.
Cohen was arrested on Friday for allegedly sharing information with a trader who passed it on to George Nikas, a 54-year-old New York restaurateur. Nikas is accused of trading in many of the same companies whose inside information Taylor and Windsor are charged with selling. Fifteen of the companies overlap.