Two fined $175,000 for insider trading
Two Kalispell people have settled insider-trading charges by paying more than $175,000 in fines.
Angela Milliard and her father, Kenneth Milliard, had been charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission with making $67,000 in profit from stock trades based on inside information related to the 2009 acquisition of Semitool Inc. by Applied Materials Inc.
The commission alleged that Angela Milliard, a paralegal, wired money to her boyfriend’s brokerage account so she could illegally trade on nonpublic details while she was working as a legal assistant on the then-secret acquisition deal.
It’s also alleged that she provided her father, Kenneth Milliard, with the confidential information.
He then traded on that information, which also was provided to his sons, who also made trades. The morning the acquisition was announced, the Milliards sold their shares for illicit profits of more than $67,000, the SEC said.
“Angela Milliard exploited her access to confidential merger and acquisition information to illicitly enrich herself and her family,” said Marc Fagel, director of the commission’s San Francisco Regional Office. “As a member of a legal department entrusted with sensitive deal documents, she had a duty to safeguard that information, not trade on it.”
According to the agency’s complaint filed in federal court in Montana, Milliard first obtained confidential information in October 2009, when she learned that Semitool and Applied Materials had entered into advanced merger negotiations.
After learning that the tender offer was going to happen in November at a nearly 30 percent premium over Semitool’s stock-trading price at the time, she wired money to her boyfriend’s brokerage account to buy shares of Semitool.
Kenneth Milliard and his sons took similar actions, reaping illegal trading profits following the public announcement of the merger on Nov. 17, 2009.
The Milliards settled with the Securities and Exchange Commission without admitting or denying the allegations.
Angela Milliard agreed to pay in full for her trading profits totaling $20,355 plus prejudgment interest of $1,614 and a penalty of $54,022. Kenneth Milliard agreed to pay the sum of his and his sons’ trading profits totaling $47,805 plus interest of $3,765 and a penalty of $47,805.