At first I assumed that she had to be in on it, and she was fired for it with that partial assumption that there was at least negligence there, but her getting a divorce over this makes me wonder.
Then again, this could also just be her distancing herself from it and not having a thing for conjugal prison visits.
It sounds like he was listening in and she had no knowledge of that, I don’t fault her at all. Short of building a lawyer level sound proof office, what else can she do when they work in the same house?
Top of page 4
>”Loudon’s wife acknowledged discussing aspects of the acquisition with Loudon during the normal course of marital communications”
https://www.sec.gov/files/litigation/complaints/2024/comp-pr2024-24.pdf
Eh. There's a reason that you can't be compelled to testify against your spouse - the law has no interest in erecting an informational barrier between husband and wife. The actual situations where you cannot share information with your spouse are extremely few. So long as she didn't know or intend for her husband to abuse that trust, she's in the clear, legally speaking.
The company she works for could of course fire her over it, if they want to.
The company very well could have sued her for damages if they suffered any sort of harm from this, even reputation damage.
Spousal privilege does not allow you to disobey a signed non-disclosure contract. In fact if you read the SEC complaint they specifically identify that she signed such a contract and then violated it by discussing this with her husband.
My husband has a security clearance and I work with confidential information all day.
I think that wall is actually great for our marriage because we can't get bogged down in talking about work shit. We share general vents ("Mary somehow STILL sucks at this", "I've got some downtime because my stuff is still being reviewed") but we share only the vague outlines of our job. I do contact stuff. He does computer stuff. We talk about other stuff.
The entire idea is you are one entity, the questions don’t ask “do you have a controlling share in xyz” it asks “do you or a family member” I know it’s not quite as relevant but this is entirely on the husband. My wife talks to me about job related stuff but I know using that knowledge to make trades is illegal so I don’t touch those stocks and try to stay away from the sector entirely. No way I would blame the wife on this one unless you can prove she had a hand in it directly imo.
They worked 20 ft away from each other while she worked on a highly sensitive matter, there’s definitely at least negligence involved.
She may or may not been aware of him buying shares of the target company, but she should’ve taken better steps to ensure that her husband (or anyone else) didn’t hear any details of the potential deal. If that was impossible while working from home, then she should’ve found other space to work (which pains me to say as a WFH advocate). At the very least she should’ve make it incredibly clear to her husband that he can’t trade based on info he learned from working in close proximity.
Idk. She brought it to her supervisor. I’m not sure firing was the right move.
What can you do in WFH? Like I guess you can blame her discretion for trusting her husband. However, on the other hand you should be able to trust your spouse. It’s like firing a manager for hiring an employee who insider trades.
This brings up an interesting issue with people that WFH while not living alone. If they’re dealing with sensitive info, how can they know it’s staying private.
If she was unmarried but had a roommate, they could also eavesdrop and take advantage of that info.
As someone in a hybrid setting at a large company who handles hiiiiiighly restricted info (pertaining to national security etc...) my WFH environment is way more private than my "open floorplan" office with 200 people walking around.
I've escalated the issue to management repeatedly, but nothing happens and it boils down to: nobody wants to shell put money for cubicles they made such a big deal about eliminating in 2019.
Open floor plans are an idea that countless business school studies have trashed as less productive. It looks aesthetically neat, but I have seen little evidence that there's much logic in it. You don't really need to have anything particularly sensitive to at the least have cubicles. I think some managers just are afraid to admit it was a disaster and turn back.
Yes, same in a previous job.
Explicitly no Alexa or Google Home in the vicinity of my workstation. On camera for all calls to show that I was alone. Doors and windows closed for certain calls and meetings.
Surely this violates some NIST or FedRamp control. We are not allowed to view sensitive info on a screen unless we ensure that screen cannot be viewed by anyone not authorized to view the data. That includes having a window behind you or anyone that could walk behind you.
An unintentional side effect of such a rule is that you’ve just made it virtually impossible for any couple who isn’t well off enough to have a large enough house/flat to both work from home.
I’m not saying you’re wrong - just pointing out that assigning all the responsibility to the employee has consequences that will be disproportionately felt most by the least well off.
Yeah, that's a possibility I guess. But part of working from home is being able to complete the same work you'd be able to do at the office. If you can't discuss confidential information at home then you can't really say you're able to do your work from home in the first place.
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> I've escalated the issue to management repeatedly, but nothing happens and it boils down to: nobody wants to shell put money for cubicles they made such a big deal about eliminating in 2019.
Isn't this why spousal privilege is a thing?
Not only does it protect your partner from action (being around sensitive information and stuff) - but it protects you from their actions if they only have the knowledge due to being a close intimate partner. You cannot reasonably expect someone dealing with sensitive information to work in a sound proof - noise isolating environment at home, so to some degree the actions of the partner cannot fall on the employee who was just talking.
At that point if it's that sensitive they shouldn't be working from home. While I was in the military I handled sensitive information and never once did I come home and talk to my spouse about it. She never could've overheard or seen anything because I would have never been allowed to take said information home to begin with.
We can and should hold people in positions of power to that standard.
> At that point if it's that sensitive they shouldn't be working from home
At which, the liability should be the person who signed off on allowing them to work from home.
I completely agree, if she handles sensitive information - her job cannot be done at home.
At least you can point to corporate espionage if information leaks then.
There are not a lot of people dealing with this level of sensitive info.
I mean, my company forces us all to go through Insider Trading training, but it's kind of a joke because the vast majority of us don't ever get exposed to any information that we could trade on.
If you do work with that level of secret info, your department should be very aware of it, so how hard would it be to stop saying "TravelCenters of America" during zoom calls, and start saying "Company B"?
It just feels like an easily solvable problem to me.
I mean true enough to your comment about the type of info and it's limited to some high level employees for deals and such. To the other person's point and for what is worth though, any call center dealing with payments will have to deal with this. All of discover's call center employees had to have a room without any access to written materials, no pens or pencils and obviously no one was allowed nearby. The answering service I used to manage, we had to set up an alternate queue for financial calls because some of our employees didn't have a proper work area to meet the regulations when we went remote.
That's a lot of people that have to meet the same regulations that are only making 16ish an hour, since they're entry level call center jobs. Discover never went back from wfh either so any new hire would have to meet these same requirements, neither did my answering service. When I worked for discover prior, discover was kind of known for being an entry level stepping stone position that paid well and treated their employees well. A lot harder to get that entry level position now that you need a separate work area.
Oh I'm not saying there is a solution. Just sucks a lot of these jobs are out of reach for some people that could definitely use em. Plus that there's quite a lot more jobs that have these regulations for work from home than you'd initially think. The wfh requirements can be pretty stringent on someone just starting out.
One job refused me cause I only had a studio so I didn't have a separate door that could be shut to the work area. I was just kind of flabbergasted cause I lived by myself. I had a legitimate 6 foot work area free from anything but that wasn't okay with Uline customer service so they refused to hire me cause there wasn't a door to that 6 foot area I could shut. I just shrugged it off cause I was only a few months from graduating with my degree, but it does get a bit ridiculous at a certain point.
That's unfortunately the way the world has always worked. Those with the most means have more opportunity to take advantage of perks that those lower down on the socioeconomic ladder can only longingly dream of.
If your wfh I'm sure they have you sign agreements like they do me that your reliable for the security of the information that can be accessed on your PC and have your monitors not be able to be viewed by windows or other people.
I have to accept this agreement almost weekly logging into my work PC and the material isn't anywhere near as sensitive as what I imagine someone from BP has.
>What can you do in WFH?
There's a lot you can do working from home.
I also work from home. We have customers I'm not allowed to even acknowledge as our customer outside of work. My husband sits 20 feet away from me and doesn't know which companies they are. If I have a meeting where I need to discuss something confidential, I'll go somewhere confidential. I've never worked with one of these super-secret companies directly, but even for lesser stuff I've absolutely gone out and called into a meeting from my car in the driveway.
Right. The article literally says her job title is a “mergers and acquisitions manager.” If anyone knew the insider trading rules, it was her and her husband
I don’t understand what you mean, the hiring person would have no control over that. The woman clearly is in control of who hears her conversations and who she trusts with the information. If the work policy says that the information is not to be shared, then she is clearly at fault for sharing it?
Yeah, she got fired *for being honest.*
Told on her husband, lost the money, her job, *and* her marriage.
People will **totally** be happy to come forward with anything similar! /s
I doubt it'll have much of an effect, she was cooked before she even reported it. The husband was *already* being investigated and it doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to make the connection to his wife's job.
Yeah, she trusted him. BP said, well...you shouldn't have, you're fired.
Best practice of course would be to separate your office or leave the room but 99% of people working at this level don't need to. Their dumbass husband would never do something so dumbass.
Which is why she definitely wasn't in on it. It was so dumb and would 100% be caught. It was greed, they were always gonna notice.
Attorneys that work from home lock their offices, lock their private documents in a safe that only they have the combination to, don't do phone calls on speakerphone if other people are at home. That's what you're supposed to do if you're working from home with confidential information. You don't trust your partner. They aren't an attorney on the case or in her situation he's not privy to confidential information just because he's married to her. You take precautions or you don't work from home.
Because what u/OhkayQyoopud said is textbook training material, but almost no one follows it. Like any other training people take, it generally goes in one ear and out the other. HR, corporate lawyers I know were the first to talk secrets as part of gossip - and that's to co-workers. Imagine if it was your partner / sibling / parent.
Should they do it? No, but good luck stopping human nature.
I don't take phone calls around other people. They are either my personal calls or business calls, and no one needs access to them.
I'm still saving up for a driver.
And none of those people can complain if they were fired for secrets getting out. It’s the same concept as the article. Follow security procedures or lose your job when information leaks.
I have lawyer friends. We get shitfaced in his home office and play with turntables slamming shots with all his case documents laying around. I will have his wife spank him
> It’s like firing a manager for hiring an employee who insider trades.
When you put it that way, sorta sounds like HR would be basically victim blaming at this point. Boys will be boys, wonder if reversed genders would have resulted in the same penalty.
>steps to ensure that her husband (or anyone else) didn’t hear
There's a kind of a trust that people place in those close to them. If you would hold insider trading as highly unethical, you want to believe that your partner would as well. Your partner may have even told you that they would never do something like that.
In terms of the absolute *most* protectionist steps she could have taken, yeah she fucked up. And I don't think it was inappropriate for her to lose her job. But in terms of actual human behavior, lots of people would trust their partners the same way she trusted hers.
Lots of people don't realise just how broad 'insider trading' is.
But it's basically _any_ privileged financial information that you then trade.
It's pretty easy to say "I just liked the stock" when there's no connections between you and someone who had privileged information, but if you did, then you'll have to give a pretty solid reason why you traded it that _wasn't_ the 'tip off'.
Which is why compliance pretty much always has 'apply to make a trade, we'll confirm if you're clear to do so' sort of rules. Because that makes it a lot easier to _prove_.
Idk, US courts still grapple with the concept of materiality with respect to insider info and what buy side analysts can and can’t hear from management without triggering an FD disclosure. Obviously compliance and OGC would like to err on the safe side, but management is always disclosing at their own discretion during investor days if we’re being honest.
I feel making your partner leave the house in order to make a phone call is a little silly. She should be able to trust her husband not do break the law on her. But, much like when your spouse cheats on you, sometimes they break that trust. This time it also cost her her job.
That really, really sucks for her, but these rules are kind of important. Alathough it doesn't say much that the backbone of our financial situation is "pinky swear you wont tell anyone"
I'm an attorney and pretty much every other attorney I know acts the same way. If we are working from home, nobody is allowed in our office, any physical documents we have are locked in a safe that we only have the combination to when we aren't there. I never did phone calls over speakerphone if anyone else was home. Definitely negligence on her part at best
Friend of mines wife is a therapist and she has a white noise generator right outside her door for when she's on calls. Works damn well as I was there once during a call.
I'm a huge WFH advocate, but like everything, there is nuance to it. If you work in M&A you probably shouldn't be taking those types of calls in the open without headphones/earbuds on.
Shoot, I work in consulting and some of our clients make us go into private rooms when I am in my actual office so nobody else hears anything on our calls.
I worked with a guy and his wife was processing a credit card for a customer. She read all the details and I wrote them down and sent it to him after saying, “you should be aware that others can hear your wife”
As someone in IT, I think this is an appropriate response by the company. We make it pretty damn clear that WFH means the duty is doubly yours to keep confidential things confidential and if that isn’t possible to work on site. This means locking your computer when afk, having files be inaccessible through various permissions-based roles or accounts, restricting the workspace from family, etc.
Confidential information being leaked (whether intentional or not) is a breach in trust between a company and an employee as well as any clients or partners with said company. This applies to every company irrespective of public opinion.
If she took steps to prevent this and it still happened, I could see firing the person as uncalled for but this doesnt seem to be the case here.
Completely agree.
I think there’s a clear difference in the comments between people who are in roles that frequently deal with confidential/insider information (and therefore know how much it is stressed, from the moment you start your job in that role) and people without the experience who are evaluating this based on how they feel about the situation.
Only thing I would ask about is does it make it look like she was punished for coming clean? I'm in IT and we tell our users there are no stupid questions and if you think it looks suspicious, ask. If you think you clicked something malicious, tell us. We want people to disclose when they need help.
If this was drilled in and mega stupid and she should know that's a different situation.
I had a buddy who would play poker with his boys, one of which was a C-Suite at a chip manufacturer.
He would duck out on calls and come back and explain how he's going to note all the people in this room so no stock trading or it'll end up real bad for ya... She absolutely should have had that conversation with him unless she was in on it.
One would hope that if she was in on it she would have taught the dummy how to do better insider trading. Never buy the actual target company stock - setup a broad sector-based trade that will profit from the news in a more spread out way. Harder to prove = SEC won't prosecute, even if they do notice. Amateur hour. IANAL. Don't do insider trading kids. But yeah. He's a moron.
I don’t think people realize that the SEC has automatic notifications if someone trades large amount of money abnormally immediately before any sort of major news and there’s more than a 90% chance you’re getting fucked.
My job has made it clear that if I am talking about highly restricted information, I need to do so without anyone else hearing it. My wife and I can not share an office because we both deal with information the other isn't supposed to hear. While I am confident she wouldn't do anything with it, I could still get fired. I am also not allowed to have calls in the presence of alexa or any other device that is always listening.
Depends how much he made and what lawyer he can afford. White collar crimes can be punished at a very low percentage of the amount of capital gained from their exploit. Reference...well any SEC prosection of a rich person.
I "get" it, but fwiw there are 3(4?) Republicans that did better than her in 2023 and I'm positively unsurprised that for *reasons*, the internet somehow hones in on her for being beaten out by 3(4?) other men
Because they dont actually care about insider trading. It's the same reason why you see Biden and Obama in memes about drone strikes but not the guy who reclassified civilian casualties as terrorists and went so nuts with drone strikes he almost started a war with Iran. They just want to pretend they care but it's about "Dems bad."
Which really sucks because it drowns out legitimate dialogues about these activities. This is the part that is most alarming to me, liberals have stopped talking about certain issues entirely because the right has made it so convoluted and confusing to know who is on which side. Like, there are many many legitimate questions about drone warfare, targeting civilians, the pandemic and how it was handled but good fucking luck talking about it because everyone will instantly assume you're an extreme partisan for merely mentioning it.
I still remember before Trump was even president I was talking to some old dude who was complaining about Obama, and I said something about the drone strikes as an olive branch/commiseration. But nope, he started rattling on about Obama having been born in Indonesia. Did not give a shit about anything Obama actually did.
I'm still waiting for him to come take my guns, by the way, if pawns of George Soros are watching me.
The right has become much better at messaging than the left in recent years. Combined that with the fact that their audience tends to be more gullible on average. There's also the fact that there's no such thing as the "liberal media" (and really never was) especially since far right billionaires have been buying traditional media up and realigning them en masse lately.
I would have expected Democrats to see it as a problem, but Pelosi said it was fine. That seems newsworthy to me, in that she went against expectation... Republicans supporting it is... Obvious. At least in expectation.
They're all fucking doing it. Just look how almost every member who was to wealthy when entering congress is pretty wealthy within a few years.
Fuck all of them
If you open your eyes a wee bit comrade you might see a little more.
But don’t trouble yourself. Because why would you?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_members_of_the_United_States_Congress_by_wealth
Net worth ($ million) 1 Kevin Hern Republican Oklahoma House Yes 361.0* 2 Rick Scott Republican Florida Senate Yes 259.7 3 Mark Warner Democratic Virginia Senate Yes 214.1 4 Greg Gianforte Republican Montana House No 189.3 5 Paul Mitchell Republican Michigan House No 179.6 6 Mitt Romney Republican Utah Senate Yes 174.5 7 Vernon Buchanan Republican Florida House Yes 157.2 8 Mike Braun Republican Indiana Senate Yes 136.8 9 Don Beyer Democratic Virginia House Yes 124.9 10 Dean Phillips Democratic Minnesota House Yes 123.8 11 Nancy Pelosi Democratic California House Yes 114.7 12 John Hoeven Republican North Dakota Senate Yes 93.4 13 Suzan DelBene Democratic Washington House Yes 79.4 14 Fred Upton Republican Michigan House No 79.0 15 Ron Johnson Republican Wisconsin Senate Yes 78.5 16 Roger Williams Republican Texas House Yes 67.0 17 Buddy Carter Republican Georgia House Yes 66.5 18 Jim Risch Republican Idaho Senate Yes 41.8 19 Mitch McConnell Republican Kentucky Senate Yes 34.1 20 Steve Daines Republican Montana Senate Yes 32.9 21 Scott Peters Democratic California House Yes 60.5* 22 Rick W. Allen Republican Georgia House Yes 52.1* 23 Joe Kennedy III Democratic Massachusetts House No 46.5* 24 Ralph Norman Republican South Carolina House Yes 43.4* 25 Kenny Marchant Republican Texas House No 33.7* 26 Lloyd Doggett Democratic Texas House Yes 29.7* 27 Brad Schneider Democratic Illinois House Yes 27.2* 28 Nita Lowey Democratic New York House No 24.8* 29 Jim Sensenbrenner Republican Wisconsin House No 21.8* 30 Phil Roe Republican Tennessee House No 20.2* 31 Richard Shelby Republican Alabama Senate No 19.1* 32 John Yarmuth Democratic Kentucky House No 17.1* 33 Jim Cooper Democratic Tennessee House No 16.3* 34 Michael Bennet Democratic Colorado Senate Yes 15.7* 36 Tom Rice Republican South Carolina House No 14.6* 37 Bill Foster Democratic Illinois House Yes 14.1* 38 Dan Newhouse Republican Washington House Yes 13.8* 39 Carolyn Maloney Democratic New York House No 13.0* 40 Earl Blumenauer Democratic Oregon House Yes 12.6* 41 Mike Kelly Republican Pennsylvania House Yes 12.4* 42 Mike Conaway Republican Texas House No 12.4* 43 Ralph Abraham Republican Louisiana House No 12.4* 44 Markwayne Mullin Republican Oklahoma Senate[a] Yes 11.4* 45 Ann Wagner Republican Missouri House Yes 11.1* 46 Jackie Speier Democratic California House No 11.0* 47 Thom Tillis Republican North Carolina Senate Yes 11.0* 48 Rob Portman Republican Ohio Senate No 10.8* 49 Lisa Blunt Rochester Democratic Delaware House Yes 10.7*
Exactly, he made money investing based on things he heard her talking about but never actually told her about.
Sounds Pelosi-esque. Not to single them out, because I’m sure there are plenty of others who try to claim that the spouse independently handles the investments and no information is ever indirectly or unintentionally disclosed that could be taken advantage of.
It's honestly not nearly as transparent as what some of our senators do. Kelly Loeffler (GA) and her husband had 24 stock sales after the secret Jan 24th COVID-19 briefing. It was jointly owned stock that amounted to over $1 million. Then they bought stock in 5 different companies (one of them was Citrix which offers teleworking software).
If you do any digging into the details the Pelosi insider trading narrative tends to fall apart. For example there were a bunch of articles about Paul selling a bunch of alphabet stock right before some hearing but if you dig a little deeper they were swaps that he sold on the last day he could sell them. Paul’s success comes from the fact that he trades mostly in tech stock.
Pelosi as the poster child is a false narrative. Yes, her husband is a stock trader and they are wealthy beyond our wildest imagination. She hasn't even been in the top five. She was just the top ranked democrat.
Is it though? I thought insider trading required that the person have some level of duty to the company, like an employee etc. If a random person happens to overhear an executive talking on the phone about a merger, they can legally trade in that information because they don’t have a responsibility to whatever company was being discussed. I could be wrong though, definitely not an expert.
Hearing a random person on the street is one thing, but your spouse is an entire different situation, insider trading can be a family member or friend of an executive who purposefully or accidentally leaked sensitive information
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1164964/000101968715004168/globalfuture_8k-ex9904.htm
>Who is an insider?
>An “insider” is an officer, director, 10% stockholder and anyone who possesses inside information because of his or her relationship with the Company or with an officer, director or principal stockholder of the Company. Rule 10b-5’s application goes considerably beyond just officers, directors and principal stockholders. This rule also covers any employee who has obtained material non-public corporate information, as well as any person who has received a “tip” from an Insider of the Company concerning information about the Company that is material and nonpublic, and trades (i.e. purchase or sells) the Company’s stock or other securities.
>**This policy also applies to your family members who reside with you**, anyone else who lives in your household, and family members who do not live in your household but whose securities transactions are directed by you or are subject to your influence or control, as well as trusts or other entities for which you make investment decisions.
Yes, but she's not going to jail, and while she's getting fired, it may be possible for her to get another job in the industry, as she disclosed it when it came to her attention and she's publicly divorcing her husband for doing this.
Yeah even in the most charitable interpretation of events, she confessed to negligence in her handling of sensitive financial information. I don't see how BP could justify keeping her.
The negligence being working from home in a house with her husband, whom she should be able to trust?
If anyone is to blame for that negligence, it's the people who authorized her to work with sensitive information from home and not a secure office. Like, I get working from home, but sometimes you have to go to the office and dealing with something of that caliber should be done on site - securely.
Actually yes, it is often made clear that if you're working from home, you should protect sensitive information even from your spouse. I work for an investment bank and I have to submit every brokerage account in my household so the bank can track them.
Negligence. She had a duty to protect confidential information.
If I’m responsible to keep data confidential, leave my laptop open and someone accesses confidential info on my laptop when I go to the restroom, I should be fired.
Doesn’t matter if I tell the truth or lie about it after the fact..
How is this not blatantly obvious?
Well duh the liability there is insane. Honestly doesn't mean you get off scott free, she either way committed crimes here. Him hearing her is an issue no matter if they are married or in the same house or anything, it is her responsibility to make sure no one knows this confidential information.
If she was in on it, that's exactly what you'd do to try to make sure you're in the clear. She's hardly going to be sending emails from her work email or even texting him about it. He must have spent a lot of time listening into her calls or he was just very lucky to overhear one side of a conversation - with enough certainty to drop a lot of cash on shares. Naaah.
I don't buy it, and neither do BP by the looks of it.
That said. It should be the same rule for everyone. Noone, and especially not members of congress, should be able to get away with it.
The Financial Times article says she discussed the deal with him directly as part of “normal marital work conversations”. She broke her confidentiality agreement.
Top of page 4
”Loudon’s wife acknowledged discussing aspects of the acquisition with Loudon during the normal course of marital communications”
https://www.sec.gov/files/litigation/complaints/2024/comp-pr2024-24.pdf
She told her husband about confidential things against policy which led to a major legal and reputational risk for the company.
Are you really surprised the company reacted that way?
Top of page 4
”Loudon’s wife acknowledged discussing aspects of the acquisition with Loudon during the normal course of marital communications”
https://www.sec.gov/files/litigation/complaints/2024/comp-pr2024-24.pdf
> According to the filing, he said he bought the stock because "he wanted to make enough money so that she did not have to work long hours anymore".
and then:
> But "BP nonetheless terminated her employment," said the filing.
Mission accomplished?
And married a snitch. I certainly wouldn't be ratting out my husband for white collar stuff, it's literally how every wealthy person alive makes money.
I mean, the article literally says that he confessed it to her when he was already under investigation and that’s when she told her supervisor. It’s not like she snitched for no reason. He was getting caught already.
Yea but the rich are all in cahoots together, they r gate keeping others who try to enter the circle. Government agencies will never bite the hand that feeds them and only go after the small fishes.
Did you miss this part?
'Mr Loudon confessed to his wife about buying the TravelCenters shares after the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority began asking questions about the BP deal and who was "in the know".'
She confessed because questions were already being asked.
Company code of conduct called for keeping the information confidential, which the employee didn’t do. That’s a fireable offense, whether she told the truth or not.
Worst possible take.
She failed to keep confidential information confidential which is definitely a fireable offense.
Secondly, she spoke about the deal with her husband which is a direct violation of the non-disclosure agreement she signed.
Her admitting what happened after the violations occurred is basically irrelevant.
If we're taking her at her word and there truly was nothing untoward going on, it's still on her to make sure this kind of info doesn't make it to any unauthorized ears.
She talked to her husband directly about the deal according to the Financial Times article.
That is a clear breach of the confidentiality agreement she signed.
I was on a flight where a person sitting in the row in front of me was working on the financial statement for a quarterly earnings for a small bank. I looked up the bank and their earnings weren’t for another 2 weeks. I didn’t trade on it, but I confirmed two weeks later that the guy was displaying the actual EPS to a plane full of people weeks before the public release.
Tldr - husband heard confidential info while his corporate wife was working remotely. he bought/sold shares in a smaller company that was about to merge with BP and made $1,700,000 USD.
He said he wanted to earn enough money so that his wife wouldn't have to work long hours anymore.
She followed policy and reported it to BP who investigated and determined she was unaware and not a part of the insider trading scheme. BP then fired her from the company.
She has since separated from her spouse and filed for divorce.
Everyone's mad that she got fired. The company can no longer trust her to not have confidential conversations within the hearing of other people. Would you keep that person on staff? If that was your attorney would you just be cool with that? Of course you wouldn't.
When I'm working on a legal case at home, when I'm living with someone else my door is closed and locked, I'm only talking on my phone not speakerphone, every physical document is kept in a safe. Including my work laptop when I'm not using it. My work laptop is only used for work and not for games or anything else. I don't open a window so that someone outside might over hear.
She didn't maintain her responsibility in her mergers and acquisition position and thus gets fired. It could be a lot worse for her. She's lucky that's all she got.
And y'all keep downvoting people saying stuff like this because you don't like reality but if you don't do your job well you get fired. If you release confidential information even just because you were talking too loudly near your husband, best case scenario you get fired. Because this is the exact kind of stuff that can come out of doing exactly that action. That's why you don't do it. That's why it's terminable offense.
It's not rocket science.
Lots of misconceptions in this thread…
I've worked in senior positions at public companies for quite a large chunk of my career. Nothing in this article surprises me. Family members are *explicitly* part of the "insider" umbrella, and the employee who is directly in possession of material non-public information is personally responsible for their actions. In other words, he broke the *law*, she *arguably* broke the law (though has a pretty solid defense), and she definitely violated corporate policy by allowing him to do what he did. It's a rough break for her, but if my partner (or anyone else in my immediate family) did something like this, I would absolutely expect to get fired.
This is one of the *very* first things you learn when you work at a public company: your family is effectively in the circle of trust, and you are personally responsible for making them aware of all that this implies. If they screw up, it's your fault just as much as it is theirs.
The good news is this almost certainly won't count against her from a career standpoint, particularly since she did the right thing in coming forward and then divorced him. Some other company will snap her up.
Am I the only one that thinks this kind of reeks of bullshit?
These two were likely in this together. The husband purchased the shares and when the SEC started asking questions, he made sure not to implicate his wife; conjuring up this lie about it happening without her knowledge. Good on him for being a man about it and keeping his wife at an arms length. The divorce is likely part of the ploy to keep assets, if he ends up paying significant fines or going to prison they won’t lose everything.
It did cross my mind, though I imagine if you were going to hatch a plan to insider trade you'd come up with something less blatant than the husband of person privy to inside information trading a lot of the actial shares.
I'm sure a lot of people get away with some version of insider trading by getting an old friend to buy options on a strongly correlated asset/fund heavily weighted on that stock or something.
If it was up to me, I wouldn’t throw either of them in jail. The SEC happily picks and chooses who it does and doesn’t prosecute, turning a blind eye to billions in profits derived from corruption and collusion. At this point, I don’t believe the SEC is here to keep the market “fair”, it’s here to keep up the delusion that we’re all equals.
All of the insider trading guidelines I get at work apply to immediate family. The assumption if always you provided them the information unless proven otherwise. Be careful buying or selling stock of companies you know you have close family members working for.
So how do these rules work anyway? If I overhear a stranger on a train talking about the same deal, am I breaking the law if I use that information to invest? Are we just never legally allowed to use knowledge we have that isn't publicly available to make investment decisions? That seems so wrong.
That's not very grey area actually. While the general description of laws on insider trading describe information not available to the public, by witnessing a statement in public on a train that other people can hear, it is not insider trading. Anyone near you would also hear the same information. And generally speaking, you wouldn't know if the statements being made from that one sided conversation you overhear is BS or not.
EDIT: The conversations the husband overheard were not made in public. And it was not so much a one-sided conversation if he was able to hear the other side as well, i.e., if his wife did not wear headphones. And he knew his wife worked at BP.
Time is so important for crimes like this. I wonder if he would have had plausible deniability if he had waited two years or more, especially if he had bought three other stocks at the same time in similar amounts.
Either way, cheating a dirty thing to do. Society corrodes quickly if everyone thinks everyone else is cheating.
At first I assumed that she had to be in on it, and she was fired for it with that partial assumption that there was at least negligence there, but her getting a divorce over this makes me wonder. Then again, this could also just be her distancing herself from it and not having a thing for conjugal prison visits.
This kind of thing (appropriating confidential information from a family member without their knowledge) is more common than you’d think.
It sounds like he was listening in and she had no knowledge of that, I don’t fault her at all. Short of building a lawyer level sound proof office, what else can she do when they work in the same house?
She admitted to talking to him about it in the course of normal marital conversations. It’s in the Financial Times article.
I didn’t read that one. In that case she’s not fully blameless
Top of page 4 >”Loudon’s wife acknowledged discussing aspects of the acquisition with Loudon during the normal course of marital communications” https://www.sec.gov/files/litigation/complaints/2024/comp-pr2024-24.pdf
“Talk dirty to me baby!” “Well there is this dirty little company we are buying, it is sooo dirty, we are paying so much for it…”
I'm almost there, now tell me about your exposure.
“It’s indecent”
*”Oh come on, I’m so close to closing! I’m about to close! I’m about to CLOSE!”*
ALWAYS be closing
Eh. There's a reason that you can't be compelled to testify against your spouse - the law has no interest in erecting an informational barrier between husband and wife. The actual situations where you cannot share information with your spouse are extremely few. So long as she didn't know or intend for her husband to abuse that trust, she's in the clear, legally speaking. The company she works for could of course fire her over it, if they want to.
The company very well could have sued her for damages if they suffered any sort of harm from this, even reputation damage. Spousal privilege does not allow you to disobey a signed non-disclosure contract. In fact if you read the SEC complaint they specifically identify that she signed such a contract and then violated it by discussing this with her husband.
My husband has a security clearance and I work with confidential information all day. I think that wall is actually great for our marriage because we can't get bogged down in talking about work shit. We share general vents ("Mary somehow STILL sucks at this", "I've got some downtime because my stuff is still being reviewed") but we share only the vague outlines of our job. I do contact stuff. He does computer stuff. We talk about other stuff.
The entire idea is you are one entity, the questions don’t ask “do you have a controlling share in xyz” it asks “do you or a family member” I know it’s not quite as relevant but this is entirely on the husband. My wife talks to me about job related stuff but I know using that knowledge to make trades is illegal so I don’t touch those stocks and try to stay away from the sector entirely. No way I would blame the wife on this one unless you can prove she had a hand in it directly imo.
And US politicians can trade securities advanced based on knowledge of laws they will pass, without consequences.
And their spouses and relatives somehow end up making really good trading decisions, too.
Pelosi: what are you going to do, vote me out?
If she worked in congress with Pelosi, it would be totally legal to insider trade with that info...
They worked 20 ft away from each other while she worked on a highly sensitive matter, there’s definitely at least negligence involved. She may or may not been aware of him buying shares of the target company, but she should’ve taken better steps to ensure that her husband (or anyone else) didn’t hear any details of the potential deal. If that was impossible while working from home, then she should’ve found other space to work (which pains me to say as a WFH advocate). At the very least she should’ve make it incredibly clear to her husband that he can’t trade based on info he learned from working in close proximity.
Idk. She brought it to her supervisor. I’m not sure firing was the right move. What can you do in WFH? Like I guess you can blame her discretion for trusting her husband. However, on the other hand you should be able to trust your spouse. It’s like firing a manager for hiring an employee who insider trades.
This brings up an interesting issue with people that WFH while not living alone. If they’re dealing with sensitive info, how can they know it’s staying private. If she was unmarried but had a roommate, they could also eavesdrop and take advantage of that info.
As someone in a hybrid setting at a large company who handles hiiiiiighly restricted info (pertaining to national security etc...) my WFH environment is way more private than my "open floorplan" office with 200 people walking around. I've escalated the issue to management repeatedly, but nothing happens and it boils down to: nobody wants to shell put money for cubicles they made such a big deal about eliminating in 2019.
open floor plans make me feel like a fish in an aquarium and the managers are the kids tapping the glass
Open floor plans are an idea that countless business school studies have trashed as less productive. It looks aesthetically neat, but I have seen little evidence that there's much logic in it. You don't really need to have anything particularly sensitive to at the least have cubicles. I think some managers just are afraid to admit it was a disaster and turn back.
cubes and open floor plans wreck productivity for a great many tasks. I fucking hate them.
Yes, same in a previous job. Explicitly no Alexa or Google Home in the vicinity of my workstation. On camera for all calls to show that I was alone. Doors and windows closed for certain calls and meetings.
Surely this violates some NIST or FedRamp control. We are not allowed to view sensitive info on a screen unless we ensure that screen cannot be viewed by anyone not authorized to view the data. That includes having a window behind you or anyone that could walk behind you.
I'm actually going to look into that, thanks. I want my fucking cubicle back!
But if you are all in the same company, aren't you bound by the same rules vs. a room mate or spouse walking around?
The same rules apply; if you're working from home its always **your** responsibility to make sure people can't eavesdrop.
An unintentional side effect of such a rule is that you’ve just made it virtually impossible for any couple who isn’t well off enough to have a large enough house/flat to both work from home. I’m not saying you’re wrong - just pointing out that assigning all the responsibility to the employee has consequences that will be disproportionately felt most by the least well off.
Yeah, that's a possibility I guess. But part of working from home is being able to complete the same work you'd be able to do at the office. If you can't discuss confidential information at home then you can't really say you're able to do your work from home in the first place.
> > > > > I've escalated the issue to management repeatedly, but nothing happens and it boils down to: nobody wants to shell put money for cubicles they made such a big deal about eliminating in 2019. Isn't this why spousal privilege is a thing? Not only does it protect your partner from action (being around sensitive information and stuff) - but it protects you from their actions if they only have the knowledge due to being a close intimate partner. You cannot reasonably expect someone dealing with sensitive information to work in a sound proof - noise isolating environment at home, so to some degree the actions of the partner cannot fall on the employee who was just talking.
At that point if it's that sensitive they shouldn't be working from home. While I was in the military I handled sensitive information and never once did I come home and talk to my spouse about it. She never could've overheard or seen anything because I would have never been allowed to take said information home to begin with. We can and should hold people in positions of power to that standard.
> At that point if it's that sensitive they shouldn't be working from home At which, the liability should be the person who signed off on allowing them to work from home. I completely agree, if she handles sensitive information - her job cannot be done at home. At least you can point to corporate espionage if information leaks then.
There are not a lot of people dealing with this level of sensitive info. I mean, my company forces us all to go through Insider Trading training, but it's kind of a joke because the vast majority of us don't ever get exposed to any information that we could trade on. If you do work with that level of secret info, your department should be very aware of it, so how hard would it be to stop saying "TravelCenters of America" during zoom calls, and start saying "Company B"? It just feels like an easily solvable problem to me.
I mean true enough to your comment about the type of info and it's limited to some high level employees for deals and such. To the other person's point and for what is worth though, any call center dealing with payments will have to deal with this. All of discover's call center employees had to have a room without any access to written materials, no pens or pencils and obviously no one was allowed nearby. The answering service I used to manage, we had to set up an alternate queue for financial calls because some of our employees didn't have a proper work area to meet the regulations when we went remote. That's a lot of people that have to meet the same regulations that are only making 16ish an hour, since they're entry level call center jobs. Discover never went back from wfh either so any new hire would have to meet these same requirements, neither did my answering service. When I worked for discover prior, discover was kind of known for being an entry level stepping stone position that paid well and treated their employees well. A lot harder to get that entry level position now that you need a separate work area.
True enough. I don't see any solution for that, though. Some jobs just are about that sensitive info, like finances or health care. It is what it is.
Oh I'm not saying there is a solution. Just sucks a lot of these jobs are out of reach for some people that could definitely use em. Plus that there's quite a lot more jobs that have these regulations for work from home than you'd initially think. The wfh requirements can be pretty stringent on someone just starting out. One job refused me cause I only had a studio so I didn't have a separate door that could be shut to the work area. I was just kind of flabbergasted cause I lived by myself. I had a legitimate 6 foot work area free from anything but that wasn't okay with Uline customer service so they refused to hire me cause there wasn't a door to that 6 foot area I could shut. I just shrugged it off cause I was only a few months from graduating with my degree, but it does get a bit ridiculous at a certain point.
And if there’s one thing for which our society _will not stand_, it’s disproportionately harming the least well off.
That's unfortunately the way the world has always worked. Those with the most means have more opportunity to take advantage of perks that those lower down on the socioeconomic ladder can only longingly dream of.
If your wfh I'm sure they have you sign agreements like they do me that your reliable for the security of the information that can be accessed on your PC and have your monitors not be able to be viewed by windows or other people. I have to accept this agreement almost weekly logging into my work PC and the material isn't anywhere near as sensitive as what I imagine someone from BP has.
>What can you do in WFH? There's a lot you can do working from home. I also work from home. We have customers I'm not allowed to even acknowledge as our customer outside of work. My husband sits 20 feet away from me and doesn't know which companies they are. If I have a meeting where I need to discuss something confidential, I'll go somewhere confidential. I've never worked with one of these super-secret companies directly, but even for lesser stuff I've absolutely gone out and called into a meeting from my car in the driveway.
You’re not supposed to talk about confidential information with anyone, even your spouse.
Right. The article literally says her job title is a “mergers and acquisitions manager.” If anyone knew the insider trading rules, it was her and her husband
It's not clear hubby knew shit, because it was bloody obviously going to come back to them.
I love the smell of fresh bread.
I don’t understand what you mean, the hiring person would have no control over that. The woman clearly is in control of who hears her conversations and who she trusts with the information. If the work policy says that the information is not to be shared, then she is clearly at fault for sharing it?
Next time someone is in this situation, they will be hesitant to report it.
Yeah, she got fired *for being honest.* Told on her husband, lost the money, her job, *and* her marriage. People will **totally** be happy to come forward with anything similar! /s
I doubt it'll have much of an effect, she was cooked before she even reported it. The husband was *already* being investigated and it doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to make the connection to his wife's job.
Yeah, she trusted him. BP said, well...you shouldn't have, you're fired. Best practice of course would be to separate your office or leave the room but 99% of people working at this level don't need to. Their dumbass husband would never do something so dumbass. Which is why she definitely wasn't in on it. It was so dumb and would 100% be caught. It was greed, they were always gonna notice.
Attorneys that work from home lock their offices, lock their private documents in a safe that only they have the combination to, don't do phone calls on speakerphone if other people are at home. That's what you're supposed to do if you're working from home with confidential information. You don't trust your partner. They aren't an attorney on the case or in her situation he's not privy to confidential information just because he's married to her. You take precautions or you don't work from home.
I know zero lawyers who do that.
Because what u/OhkayQyoopud said is textbook training material, but almost no one follows it. Like any other training people take, it generally goes in one ear and out the other. HR, corporate lawyers I know were the first to talk secrets as part of gossip - and that's to co-workers. Imagine if it was your partner / sibling / parent. Should they do it? No, but good luck stopping human nature.
I know a lawyer who once had his driver stop the car on the side of the road so that he could get out to take a sensitive call. Wild stuff.
I don't take phone calls around other people. They are either my personal calls or business calls, and no one needs access to them. I'm still saving up for a driver.
I tried calling you up to give you the money for one but you didn't answer, so I spent it all having someone dig potholes along your commute.
And none of those people can complain if they were fired for secrets getting out. It’s the same concept as the article. Follow security procedures or lose your job when information leaks.
I have lawyer friends. We get shitfaced in his home office and play with turntables slamming shots with all his case documents laying around. I will have his wife spank him
I know a lawyer who got sanctioned because he had a single client phone call in earshot of his wife.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/193aw2j/aita_for_cursing_at_my_niece_when_she_went_into/ 😅 this one learned the hard way
> It’s like firing a manager for hiring an employee who insider trades. When you put it that way, sorta sounds like HR would be basically victim blaming at this point. Boys will be boys, wonder if reversed genders would have resulted in the same penalty.
>steps to ensure that her husband (or anyone else) didn’t hear There's a kind of a trust that people place in those close to them. If you would hold insider trading as highly unethical, you want to believe that your partner would as well. Your partner may have even told you that they would never do something like that. In terms of the absolute *most* protectionist steps she could have taken, yeah she fucked up. And I don't think it was inappropriate for her to lose her job. But in terms of actual human behavior, lots of people would trust their partners the same way she trusted hers.
I enjoy playing video games.
Lots of people don't realise just how broad 'insider trading' is. But it's basically _any_ privileged financial information that you then trade. It's pretty easy to say "I just liked the stock" when there's no connections between you and someone who had privileged information, but if you did, then you'll have to give a pretty solid reason why you traded it that _wasn't_ the 'tip off'. Which is why compliance pretty much always has 'apply to make a trade, we'll confirm if you're clear to do so' sort of rules. Because that makes it a lot easier to _prove_.
Idk, US courts still grapple with the concept of materiality with respect to insider info and what buy side analysts can and can’t hear from management without triggering an FD disclosure. Obviously compliance and OGC would like to err on the safe side, but management is always disclosing at their own discretion during investor days if we’re being honest.
I feel making your partner leave the house in order to make a phone call is a little silly. She should be able to trust her husband not do break the law on her. But, much like when your spouse cheats on you, sometimes they break that trust. This time it also cost her her job. That really, really sucks for her, but these rules are kind of important. Alathough it doesn't say much that the backbone of our financial situation is "pinky swear you wont tell anyone"
I don't think its very normal to hide most details of your business from your spouse unless you're working on top secret shit.
I'm an attorney and pretty much every other attorney I know acts the same way. If we are working from home, nobody is allowed in our office, any physical documents we have are locked in a safe that we only have the combination to when we aren't there. I never did phone calls over speakerphone if anyone else was home. Definitely negligence on her part at best
Friend of mines wife is a therapist and she has a white noise generator right outside her door for when she's on calls. Works damn well as I was there once during a call.
Till congress and politicians are hold to an ounce of this level of scrutiny, I don't care.
Congress exempted themselves from insider trading rules, the shitfucks
I'm a huge WFH advocate, but like everything, there is nuance to it. If you work in M&A you probably shouldn't be taking those types of calls in the open without headphones/earbuds on. Shoot, I work in consulting and some of our clients make us go into private rooms when I am in my actual office so nobody else hears anything on our calls.
I worked with a guy and his wife was processing a credit card for a customer. She read all the details and I wrote them down and sent it to him after saying, “you should be aware that others can hear your wife”
As someone in IT, I think this is an appropriate response by the company. We make it pretty damn clear that WFH means the duty is doubly yours to keep confidential things confidential and if that isn’t possible to work on site. This means locking your computer when afk, having files be inaccessible through various permissions-based roles or accounts, restricting the workspace from family, etc. Confidential information being leaked (whether intentional or not) is a breach in trust between a company and an employee as well as any clients or partners with said company. This applies to every company irrespective of public opinion. If she took steps to prevent this and it still happened, I could see firing the person as uncalled for but this doesnt seem to be the case here.
Completely agree. I think there’s a clear difference in the comments between people who are in roles that frequently deal with confidential/insider information (and therefore know how much it is stressed, from the moment you start your job in that role) and people without the experience who are evaluating this based on how they feel about the situation.
Only thing I would ask about is does it make it look like she was punished for coming clean? I'm in IT and we tell our users there are no stupid questions and if you think it looks suspicious, ask. If you think you clicked something malicious, tell us. We want people to disclose when they need help. If this was drilled in and mega stupid and she should know that's a different situation.
I had a buddy who would play poker with his boys, one of which was a C-Suite at a chip manufacturer. He would duck out on calls and come back and explain how he's going to note all the people in this room so no stock trading or it'll end up real bad for ya... She absolutely should have had that conversation with him unless she was in on it.
Why should she care when Congress insider trades blatantly?
One would hope that if she was in on it she would have taught the dummy how to do better insider trading. Never buy the actual target company stock - setup a broad sector-based trade that will profit from the news in a more spread out way. Harder to prove = SEC won't prosecute, even if they do notice. Amateur hour. IANAL. Don't do insider trading kids. But yeah. He's a moron.
She's the one who reported her husband as well. I think it's pretty clear she wasn't in on it as she's the reason any of it came to light.
The article says he only told her after they started asking him questions. They were already on to him.
I don’t think people realize that the SEC has automatic notifications if someone trades large amount of money abnormally immediately before any sort of major news and there’s more than a 90% chance you’re getting fucked.
My job has made it clear that if I am talking about highly restricted information, I need to do so without anyone else hearing it. My wife and I can not share an office because we both deal with information the other isn't supposed to hear. While I am confident she wouldn't do anything with it, I could still get fired. I am also not allowed to have calls in the presence of alexa or any other device that is always listening.
>her getting a divorce She gets half of the ill-gotten gains if they settle the assets in the divorce, 3D chess not sure if /s
Certainly not a lawyer, but he wouldn't get to keep the money, would he?
Depends how much he made and what lawyer he can afford. White collar crimes can be punished at a very low percentage of the amount of capital gained from their exploit. Reference...well any SEC prosection of a rich person.
Is this much different than the US congress?
Yes... US Congress had the power to write the laws so they can do insider trading legally
Nancy polosi we see you
and everyone else in congress
Someone published their portfolio net worth (or I assume they have too?) And it's hilarious how vertical their portfolio goes once they get in
I "get" it, but fwiw there are 3(4?) Republicans that did better than her in 2023 and I'm positively unsurprised that for *reasons*, the internet somehow hones in on her for being beaten out by 3(4?) other men
Because they dont actually care about insider trading. It's the same reason why you see Biden and Obama in memes about drone strikes but not the guy who reclassified civilian casualties as terrorists and went so nuts with drone strikes he almost started a war with Iran. They just want to pretend they care but it's about "Dems bad."
Which really sucks because it drowns out legitimate dialogues about these activities. This is the part that is most alarming to me, liberals have stopped talking about certain issues entirely because the right has made it so convoluted and confusing to know who is on which side. Like, there are many many legitimate questions about drone warfare, targeting civilians, the pandemic and how it was handled but good fucking luck talking about it because everyone will instantly assume you're an extreme partisan for merely mentioning it.
I still remember before Trump was even president I was talking to some old dude who was complaining about Obama, and I said something about the drone strikes as an olive branch/commiseration. But nope, he started rattling on about Obama having been born in Indonesia. Did not give a shit about anything Obama actually did. I'm still waiting for him to come take my guns, by the way, if pawns of George Soros are watching me.
Probably has something to do with her making a wild comment about it on TV when asked if something was going to be done about insider trading.
The right has become much better at messaging than the left in recent years. Combined that with the fact that their audience tends to be more gullible on average. There's also the fact that there's no such thing as the "liberal media" (and really never was) especially since far right billionaires have been buying traditional media up and realigning them en masse lately.
I would have expected Democrats to see it as a problem, but Pelosi said it was fine. That seems newsworthy to me, in that she went against expectation... Republicans supporting it is... Obvious. At least in expectation.
They're all fucking doing it. Just look how almost every member who was to wealthy when entering congress is pretty wealthy within a few years. Fuck all of them
Nancy Pelosi didn’t even beat the market index btw, you’re looking at very cherry picked time periods to make her returns look great.
Did you look at her husband's hedgefund performance?
If you open your eyes a wee bit comrade you might see a little more. But don’t trouble yourself. Because why would you? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_members_of_the_United_States_Congress_by_wealth Net worth ($ million) 1 Kevin Hern Republican Oklahoma House Yes 361.0* 2 Rick Scott Republican Florida Senate Yes 259.7 3 Mark Warner Democratic Virginia Senate Yes 214.1 4 Greg Gianforte Republican Montana House No 189.3 5 Paul Mitchell Republican Michigan House No 179.6 6 Mitt Romney Republican Utah Senate Yes 174.5 7 Vernon Buchanan Republican Florida House Yes 157.2 8 Mike Braun Republican Indiana Senate Yes 136.8 9 Don Beyer Democratic Virginia House Yes 124.9 10 Dean Phillips Democratic Minnesota House Yes 123.8 11 Nancy Pelosi Democratic California House Yes 114.7 12 John Hoeven Republican North Dakota Senate Yes 93.4 13 Suzan DelBene Democratic Washington House Yes 79.4 14 Fred Upton Republican Michigan House No 79.0 15 Ron Johnson Republican Wisconsin Senate Yes 78.5 16 Roger Williams Republican Texas House Yes 67.0 17 Buddy Carter Republican Georgia House Yes 66.5 18 Jim Risch Republican Idaho Senate Yes 41.8 19 Mitch McConnell Republican Kentucky Senate Yes 34.1 20 Steve Daines Republican Montana Senate Yes 32.9 21 Scott Peters Democratic California House Yes 60.5* 22 Rick W. Allen Republican Georgia House Yes 52.1* 23 Joe Kennedy III Democratic Massachusetts House No 46.5* 24 Ralph Norman Republican South Carolina House Yes 43.4* 25 Kenny Marchant Republican Texas House No 33.7* 26 Lloyd Doggett Democratic Texas House Yes 29.7* 27 Brad Schneider Democratic Illinois House Yes 27.2* 28 Nita Lowey Democratic New York House No 24.8* 29 Jim Sensenbrenner Republican Wisconsin House No 21.8* 30 Phil Roe Republican Tennessee House No 20.2* 31 Richard Shelby Republican Alabama Senate No 19.1* 32 John Yarmuth Democratic Kentucky House No 17.1* 33 Jim Cooper Democratic Tennessee House No 16.3* 34 Michael Bennet Democratic Colorado Senate Yes 15.7* 36 Tom Rice Republican South Carolina House No 14.6* 37 Bill Foster Democratic Illinois House Yes 14.1* 38 Dan Newhouse Republican Washington House Yes 13.8* 39 Carolyn Maloney Democratic New York House No 13.0* 40 Earl Blumenauer Democratic Oregon House Yes 12.6* 41 Mike Kelly Republican Pennsylvania House Yes 12.4* 42 Mike Conaway Republican Texas House No 12.4* 43 Ralph Abraham Republican Louisiana House No 12.4* 44 Markwayne Mullin Republican Oklahoma Senate[a] Yes 11.4* 45 Ann Wagner Republican Missouri House Yes 11.1* 46 Jackie Speier Democratic California House No 11.0* 47 Thom Tillis Republican North Carolina Senate Yes 11.0* 48 Rob Portman Republican Ohio Senate No 10.8* 49 Lisa Blunt Rochester Democratic Delaware House Yes 10.7*
>If you open your eyes a wee bit comrade you might see a little more. My eyes were open, but then that ungodly wall in text made me close them again
Yes, he didn't hear about the inside information in a legally shielded way.
idk what the laws in the uk are but in the us this would be insider trading.
Unless you are in congress or on the Supreme Court. Then it is just business as usual.
It's not even business as usual its business as constructed.
Too true. It is by design. Across the board.
Isn't that usually how business as usual works?
This happened in the US
Exactly, he made money investing based on things he heard her talking about but never actually told her about. Sounds Pelosi-esque. Not to single them out, because I’m sure there are plenty of others who try to claim that the spouse independently handles the investments and no information is ever indirectly or unintentionally disclosed that could be taken advantage of.
It's honestly not nearly as transparent as what some of our senators do. Kelly Loeffler (GA) and her husband had 24 stock sales after the secret Jan 24th COVID-19 briefing. It was jointly owned stock that amounted to over $1 million. Then they bought stock in 5 different companies (one of them was Citrix which offers teleworking software).
If you do any digging into the details the Pelosi insider trading narrative tends to fall apart. For example there were a bunch of articles about Paul selling a bunch of alphabet stock right before some hearing but if you dig a little deeper they were swaps that he sold on the last day he could sell them. Paul’s success comes from the fact that he trades mostly in tech stock.
Pelosi as the poster child is a false narrative. Yes, her husband is a stock trader and they are wealthy beyond our wildest imagination. She hasn't even been in the top five. She was just the top ranked democrat.
Damn right! That’s money that Congress could have made through THEIR insider trading! The balls on this guy…
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Yup. That’s called “insider trading” and it’s illegal… unless you/your family member(I think) is a congressman.
Is it though? I thought insider trading required that the person have some level of duty to the company, like an employee etc. If a random person happens to overhear an executive talking on the phone about a merger, they can legally trade in that information because they don’t have a responsibility to whatever company was being discussed. I could be wrong though, definitely not an expert.
Hearing a random person on the street is one thing, but your spouse is an entire different situation, insider trading can be a family member or friend of an executive who purposefully or accidentally leaked sensitive information
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1164964/000101968715004168/globalfuture_8k-ex9904.htm >Who is an insider? >An “insider” is an officer, director, 10% stockholder and anyone who possesses inside information because of his or her relationship with the Company or with an officer, director or principal stockholder of the Company. Rule 10b-5’s application goes considerably beyond just officers, directors and principal stockholders. This rule also covers any employee who has obtained material non-public corporate information, as well as any person who has received a “tip” from an Insider of the Company concerning information about the Company that is material and nonpublic, and trades (i.e. purchase or sells) the Company’s stock or other securities. >**This policy also applies to your family members who reside with you**, anyone else who lives in your household, and family members who do not live in your household but whose securities transactions are directed by you or are subject to your influence or control, as well as trusts or other entities for which you make investment decisions.
Thanks for the well sourced correction.
She was honest and they still fired her. Goes to show you.
I can't believe an oil company would ruin their historic streak of perfectly ethical decisions
For the first time in the history of the English language, you have put “oil company” and “ethical” in the same sentence (even if it was snarky).
Yes, but she's not going to jail, and while she's getting fired, it may be possible for her to get another job in the industry, as she disclosed it when it came to her attention and she's publicly divorcing her husband for doing this.
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Yeah even in the most charitable interpretation of events, she confessed to negligence in her handling of sensitive financial information. I don't see how BP could justify keeping her.
The negligence being working from home in a house with her husband, whom she should be able to trust? If anyone is to blame for that negligence, it's the people who authorized her to work with sensitive information from home and not a secure office. Like, I get working from home, but sometimes you have to go to the office and dealing with something of that caliber should be done on site - securely.
Actually yes, it is often made clear that if you're working from home, you should protect sensitive information even from your spouse. I work for an investment bank and I have to submit every brokerage account in my household so the bank can track them.
She was fired for negligence not dishonesty. Which is far enough. Her honesty is probably what saved her from prison.
Negligence. She had a duty to protect confidential information. If I’m responsible to keep data confidential, leave my laptop open and someone accesses confidential info on my laptop when I go to the restroom, I should be fired. Doesn’t matter if I tell the truth or lie about it after the fact.. How is this not blatantly obvious?
Well duh the liability there is insane. Honestly doesn't mean you get off scott free, she either way committed crimes here. Him hearing her is an issue no matter if they are married or in the same house or anything, it is her responsibility to make sure no one knows this confidential information.
If she was in on it, that's exactly what you'd do to try to make sure you're in the clear. She's hardly going to be sending emails from her work email or even texting him about it. He must have spent a lot of time listening into her calls or he was just very lucky to overhear one side of a conversation - with enough certainty to drop a lot of cash on shares. Naaah. I don't buy it, and neither do BP by the looks of it. That said. It should be the same rule for everyone. Noone, and especially not members of congress, should be able to get away with it.
The Financial Times article says she discussed the deal with him directly as part of “normal marital work conversations”. She broke her confidentiality agreement. Top of page 4 ”Loudon’s wife acknowledged discussing aspects of the acquisition with Loudon during the normal course of marital communications” https://www.sec.gov/files/litigation/complaints/2024/comp-pr2024-24.pdf
She told her husband about confidential things against policy which led to a major legal and reputational risk for the company. Are you really surprised the company reacted that way? Top of page 4 ”Loudon’s wife acknowledged discussing aspects of the acquisition with Loudon during the normal course of marital communications” https://www.sec.gov/files/litigation/complaints/2024/comp-pr2024-24.pdf
> According to the filing, he said he bought the stock because "he wanted to make enough money so that she did not have to work long hours anymore". and then: > But "BP nonetheless terminated her employment," said the filing. Mission accomplished?
He bought 46 thousand shares. They already had enough money. This is bullshit.
Man just wanted to spend some extra time with his wife. Ends up getting divorced and ruins her career.
Lol he's only getting in trouble because he isn't rich
He bought around $2 million in shares in the first place so I’m pretty sure he’s fairly rich.
$2M is not rich enough and certainly not powerful enough to get away with insider trading.
Indeedy, but I wouldn’t call someone with $2 million spare to spend on shares not rich.
There's rich and there's immune from laws rich. They were just specifying which they meant.
And married a snitch. I certainly wouldn't be ratting out my husband for white collar stuff, it's literally how every wealthy person alive makes money.
I mean, the article literally says that he confessed it to her when he was already under investigation and that’s when she told her supervisor. It’s not like she snitched for no reason. He was getting caught already.
Your husband knowingly did something illegal to gain $, didn't tell you, and destroyed your career. Not just illegal, blatantly stupid.
This country is a joke. The fossils in Congress do this stuff daily.
Yea but the rich are all in cahoots together, they r gate keeping others who try to enter the circle. Government agencies will never bite the hand that feeds them and only go after the small fishes.
Rules apply differently for poor people
It's expensive to be poor.
So telling the truth and doing the right thing gets you fired anyways. Awesome!
Yep. Next person in her position is going to think twice about doing the right thing.
Did you miss this part? 'Mr Loudon confessed to his wife about buying the TravelCenters shares after the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority began asking questions about the BP deal and who was "in the know".' She confessed because questions were already being asked.
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Company code of conduct called for keeping the information confidential, which the employee didn’t do. That’s a fireable offense, whether she told the truth or not.
Worst possible take. She failed to keep confidential information confidential which is definitely a fireable offense. Secondly, she spoke about the deal with her husband which is a direct violation of the non-disclosure agreement she signed. Her admitting what happened after the violations occurred is basically irrelevant.
Is negligence the right thing?
Negligence gets you fired. Not shocking at all.
If we're taking her at her word and there truly was nothing untoward going on, it's still on her to make sure this kind of info doesn't make it to any unauthorized ears.
She talked to her husband directly about the deal according to the Financial Times article. That is a clear breach of the confidentiality agreement she signed.
The claim that she had no idea what was happening seems fishy.
She divorced her husband over it, is that something that someone would do if they were in on the scheme?
"Its all big fucking club, and you aint in it" -George Carlin
This is in my line of work. Good to see results from filling out all those SAR’s! 😆
I think this is the rule, and not the exception.
I was on a flight where a person sitting in the row in front of me was working on the financial statement for a quarterly earnings for a small bank. I looked up the bank and their earnings weren’t for another 2 weeks. I didn’t trade on it, but I confirmed two weeks later that the guy was displaying the actual EPS to a plane full of people weeks before the public release.
Tldr - husband heard confidential info while his corporate wife was working remotely. he bought/sold shares in a smaller company that was about to merge with BP and made $1,700,000 USD. He said he wanted to earn enough money so that his wife wouldn't have to work long hours anymore. She followed policy and reported it to BP who investigated and determined she was unaware and not a part of the insider trading scheme. BP then fired her from the company. She has since separated from her spouse and filed for divorce.
Too bad his wife wasn't in Congress; she'd still have her job, and they'd still be married.
Everyone's mad that she got fired. The company can no longer trust her to not have confidential conversations within the hearing of other people. Would you keep that person on staff? If that was your attorney would you just be cool with that? Of course you wouldn't. When I'm working on a legal case at home, when I'm living with someone else my door is closed and locked, I'm only talking on my phone not speakerphone, every physical document is kept in a safe. Including my work laptop when I'm not using it. My work laptop is only used for work and not for games or anything else. I don't open a window so that someone outside might over hear. She didn't maintain her responsibility in her mergers and acquisition position and thus gets fired. It could be a lot worse for her. She's lucky that's all she got. And y'all keep downvoting people saying stuff like this because you don't like reality but if you don't do your job well you get fired. If you release confidential information even just because you were talking too loudly near your husband, best case scenario you get fired. Because this is the exact kind of stuff that can come out of doing exactly that action. That's why you don't do it. That's why it's terminable offense. It's not rocket science.
Sounds like insider trading with extra steps
It's not even with extra steps.
Less steps.
The SEC agrees
I’m a nanny and you’d be amazed at how many wfh parents don’t close their office door. If I was in the business of corporate espionage……
You need to be a senator if youre going to be doing that shit.
SMH, they messed up by not getting into Congress
Lots of misconceptions in this thread… I've worked in senior positions at public companies for quite a large chunk of my career. Nothing in this article surprises me. Family members are *explicitly* part of the "insider" umbrella, and the employee who is directly in possession of material non-public information is personally responsible for their actions. In other words, he broke the *law*, she *arguably* broke the law (though has a pretty solid defense), and she definitely violated corporate policy by allowing him to do what he did. It's a rough break for her, but if my partner (or anyone else in my immediate family) did something like this, I would absolutely expect to get fired. This is one of the *very* first things you learn when you work at a public company: your family is effectively in the circle of trust, and you are personally responsible for making them aware of all that this implies. If they screw up, it's your fault just as much as it is theirs. The good news is this almost certainly won't count against her from a career standpoint, particularly since she did the right thing in coming forward and then divorced him. Some other company will snap her up.
Am I the only one that thinks this kind of reeks of bullshit? These two were likely in this together. The husband purchased the shares and when the SEC started asking questions, he made sure not to implicate his wife; conjuring up this lie about it happening without her knowledge. Good on him for being a man about it and keeping his wife at an arms length. The divorce is likely part of the ploy to keep assets, if he ends up paying significant fines or going to prison they won’t lose everything.
It did cross my mind, though I imagine if you were going to hatch a plan to insider trade you'd come up with something less blatant than the husband of person privy to inside information trading a lot of the actial shares. I'm sure a lot of people get away with some version of insider trading by getting an old friend to buy options on a strongly correlated asset/fund heavily weighted on that stock or something.
Sure but innocent until proven guilty. We try not to put people in prison for "likely".
If it was up to me, I wouldn’t throw either of them in jail. The SEC happily picks and chooses who it does and doesn’t prosecute, turning a blind eye to billions in profits derived from corruption and collusion. At this point, I don’t believe the SEC is here to keep the market “fair”, it’s here to keep up the delusion that we’re all equals.
Yup, I agree. They are "staging" their actions and remarks to keep assets and to avoid prosecution It's a script their lawyer gave them...
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She wouldn’t even get out of bed for that kind of scratch.
All of the insider trading guidelines I get at work apply to immediate family. The assumption if always you provided them the information unless proven otherwise. Be careful buying or selling stock of companies you know you have close family members working for.
You're either an idiot or you're in on it. Either way, we can't have it.
So how do these rules work anyway? If I overhear a stranger on a train talking about the same deal, am I breaking the law if I use that information to invest? Are we just never legally allowed to use knowledge we have that isn't publicly available to make investment decisions? That seems so wrong.
That's not very grey area actually. While the general description of laws on insider trading describe information not available to the public, by witnessing a statement in public on a train that other people can hear, it is not insider trading. Anyone near you would also hear the same information. And generally speaking, you wouldn't know if the statements being made from that one sided conversation you overhear is BS or not. EDIT: The conversations the husband overheard were not made in public. And it was not so much a one-sided conversation if he was able to hear the other side as well, i.e., if his wife did not wear headphones. And he knew his wife worked at BP.
You only can do insider trading if you’re in Congress.
Time is so important for crimes like this. I wonder if he would have had plausible deniability if he had waited two years or more, especially if he had bought three other stocks at the same time in similar amounts. Either way, cheating a dirty thing to do. Society corrodes quickly if everyone thinks everyone else is cheating.
should have been his Senator wife, then it would pass
How could he be married to someone with that job and not realize that you can't do this and will get caught?
This kind of behavior is only allowed by those in government.
Oh look a normie tried to make a buck.. Try being a US Senator or in Congress next time.
American politicians do this all the time.