In the summer of 2001, General Electric (GE) acquired Heller Financial. Before the deal was publicly announced, Pequot Capital Management Arthur Samberg directed the purchase of “a little over a million shares” of Heller Financial stock and also directed Pequot to short shares of GE during the same time period. Just after the acquisition was announced, Samberg sold the Heller stock and covered the GE short position, resulting in approximately $18 million in profits over a period of a few weeks.
These trades set in motion an SEC insider trading investigation in 2003, but also a series of related, follow-on investigations that has grown to be truly beyond belief and which continues to this day. In short, these trades have so far led to:
