Treble Damages, Deterrence, and Their Relation to Substantive Law: Ramifications Under the Insider Trading Sanctions Act of 1984
Year: 2011
Type: article
Abstract: REPORT, supra note 1, at 2, 3, 21."Insider trading" is a term used to refer to trading in the securities markets by "insiders" -corporate executives, officers or their employees-while in possession of material information not yet disseminated to the general public.This term may also be extended to include persons such as attorneys, accountants, underwriters, and other agents who, through their positions of trust and confidence, become "temporary" insiders.See Dirks v. SEC, 463 U.S. 646, 655 n. 14 (1983); Langevoort, The Insider Trading Sanctions Act of 1984 and its Effect on Existing Law, 37 VAND.L. REV.1273 (1984).The term "insider trading" is actually a misnomer because "insiders" may be "temporary" or "constructive" insiders, "trading" may be done by "tippees" of the insider who then trade, and the information underlying an illegal trade may not be "inside" but rather external "market" information not yet generally known, all of which reveals the difficulty in concluding that insider trading is currently well defined.Report of the Task Force on Regulation of Insider Trading Part I: Regulation Under the Antifraud Provisions of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, 41 Bus.LAW.223, 224 (1985) [hereinafter cited as Task Force Report].There is evidence that the incidence of insider trading is very high and may in fact be the most common violation of the federal securities laws.See Dooley, Enforcement of Insider Trading Restrictions, 66 VA.L. REV. 1, 6-7 (1980); Note, A Critique of the Insider Trading Sanctions Act of 1984, 71 VA.L. REV.455, 455 (1985).For a brief list of the vast literature dealing with the legal problem of insider trading, see H.
Author: Michael J. Metzger
Institution: Valparaiso University
Language: English
Subfield: Marketing
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1486712590