Former Dow Jones & Co director David Li (
Li, 68, chairman of Bank of East Asia Ltd and a member of Hong Kong's legislature, will pay a fine of about US$8 million. Kan King Wong (
The commission approved the settlements at a closed-door meeting in Washington on Thursday and they may be announced as soon as next week, the sources said.
Li is the most high-profile figure to be penalized so far in an SEC crackdown on trading ahead of company mergers and acquisitions. The agency also sued former employees at UBS AG, Morgan Stanley, Bear Stearns Cos and Credit Suisse Group in the past year.
Li denied leaking confidential information after the SEC filed suit against the Wongs in federal court in Manhattan last May.
The suit claimed their well-timed bets on Dow Jones stocks earned them US$8.2 million in profit when Rupert Murdoch's News Corp unveiled a US$5.1 billion bid for the publisher of the Wall Street Journal.
Ranked by profits, the case was the largest among a spate of insider-trading lawsuits filed by US regulators against foreign investors last year.
In May, the SEC claimed that Ajaz Rahim, former head of investment banking for Faysal Bank Ltd in Karachi, Pakistan, reaped more than US$7 million by trading on tips from an associate at Credit Suisse in New York. SEC lawsuits also targeted people from Canada, Switzerland, the UK, Brazil and Taiwan.
Rahim has denied the accusations and is fighting extradition on related criminal charges.
Shares of Dow Jones surged 55 percent when News Corp's offer was announced on May 1. A week later, the SEC filed suit against the Wongs, claiming they bought 415,000 shares valued at more than US$15 million in less than three weeks, just before the takeover became public. Their buying spree allegedly accounted for more than 3 percent of the shares' total trading volume during the period.
The Financial Times reported late last month that Li was negotiating an agreement with the SEC.
A day later, the South China Morning Post quoted him saying he had "no knowledge" of the reported settlement.
He and the Wongs won't admit or deny wrongdoing under the accords, one of the people familiar with the case said.
Li will not be barred from serving as an officer or director at a US public company under his agreement with the SEC, the person said.
Taiwan’s technology protection rules prohibits Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) from producing 2-nanometer chips abroad, so the company must keep its most cutting-edge technology at home, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. Kuo made the remarks in response to concerns that TSMC might be forced to produce advanced 2-nanometer chips at its fabs in Arizona ahead of schedule after former US president Donald Trump was re-elected as the next US president on Tuesday. “Since Taiwan has related regulations to protect its own technologies, TSMC cannot produce 2-nanometer chips overseas currently,” Kuo said at a meeting of the legislature’s
TECH WAR CONTINUES: The suspension of TSMC AI chips and GPUs would be a heavy blow to China’s chip designers and would affect its competitive edge Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, is reportedly to halt supply of artificial intelligence (AI) chips and graphics processing units (GPUs) made on 7-nanometer or more advanced process technologies from next week in order to comply with US Department of Commerce rules. TSMC has sent e-mails to its Chinese AI customers, informing them about the suspension starting on Monday, Chinese online news outlet Ijiwei.com (愛集微) reported yesterday. The US Department of Commerce has not formally unveiled further semiconductor measures against China yet. “TSMC does not comment on market rumors. TSMC is a law-abiding company and we are
FLEXIBLE: Taiwan can develop its own ground station equipment, and has highly competitive manufacturers and suppliers with diversified production, the MOEA said The Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) yesterday disputed reports that suppliers to US-based Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) had been asked to move production out of Taiwan. Reuters had reported on Tuesday last week that Elon Musk-owned SpaceX had asked their manufacturers to produce outside of Taiwan given geopolitical risks and that at least one Taiwanese supplier had been pushed to relocate production to Vietnam. SpaceX’s requests place a renewed focus on the contentious relationship Musk has had with Taiwan, especially after he said last year that Taiwan is an “integral part” of China, sparking sharp criticism from Taiwanese authorities. The ministry said
US President Joe Biden’s administration is racing to complete CHIPS and Science Act agreements with companies such as Intel Corp and Samsung Electronics Co, aiming to shore up one of its signature initiatives before US president-elect Donald Trump enters the White House. The US Department of Commerce has allocated more than 90 percent of the US$39 billion in grants under the act, a landmark law enacted in 2022 designed to rebuild the domestic chip industry. However, the agency has only announced one binding agreement so far. The next two months would prove critical for more than 20 companies still in the process
RSS