The Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) has ordered two lifetime bans and almost $4 million in monetary sanctions against four players in a Bay Street insider-trading ring.
The provincial securities regulator handed down sanctions on Wednesday in a case against four investment industry insiders who were found to have engaged in illegal insider trading in connection with several corporate merger deals. The penalties come in the wake of a ruling the OSC handed down in February, which found that four people and one company engaged in insider trading and tipping as they circulated information about pending corporate mergers and acquisitions.
On Wednesday, the OSC ordered that Eda Marie Agueci, a former GMP Securities LP executive assistant, be banned permanently and ordered to pay $350,000 in penalties and $300,000 in costs for her role in trading on advance knowledge of merger deals, tipping others, and misleading OSC staff.
In February, the OSC panel found that Agueci, who worked in the mining group of the corporate finance department at GMP from 2002 to 2011, learned undisclosed material facts about several companies and passed those along to certain associates, including people she’d worked with in the past at First Marathon Securities Ltd.
One of those associates, Dennis Wing, the president and CEO of brokerage firm Fort House Inc. — and an offshore firm controlled by Wing, Pollen Services Ltd. — has also been permanently banned by the OSC. Wing was found to have traded with inside information in two instances and to have misled the OSC.
The regulator has ordered Wing and Pollen to pay $1.5 million in penalties, more than $500,000 in disgorgement and $300,000 in costs. The OSC also ordered a separate $250,000 penalty against Wing alone.
In addition, another Agueci associate, Henry Fiorillo, who was found to have traded on insider information in three cases, was banned for 15 years and ordered to pay $350,000 in penalties, $175,000 in disgorgement and $50,000 in costs.
The OSC also found that Kimberley Stephany, an advisor with Fort House, traded on inside information in three instances and passed along undisclosed information to a client in two of those deals. She was banned for 15 years and ordered to pay $15,000 in penalties, along with $7,500 in disgorgement, and $25,000 in costs.
“Agueci’s conduct in tipping the other respondents … and the conduct of the other respondents in trading [on that information] are among the most serious contraventions,” the OSC wrote in its decision, adding that misleading its staff is also a “particularly egregious violation of the public interest and a serious breach.”
The large, complex case consumed 57 hearing days, starting in 2013. And, the OSC didn’t prove all of the allegations that it brought in the case —numerous other allegations of tipping and insider trading were dismissed by the panel back in February.