On January 14, 2022, a federal district court in the Northern District of California declined to dismiss the first-ever enforcement action by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) based on allegations of “shadow trading” — the use of one company’s inside information to trade in securities of another, similarly situated, but unrelated company.
In a typical insider trading case brought under Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (“Section 10(b)”), liability is limited to trading on the basis of material, non-public information specific to the company in which the trading at issue occurred. The court’s decision in SEC v. Panuwat, therefore, may signal an expansion of insider trading enforcement.