Categories: OLD Media Moves

Former Dow Jones board member settles with SEC

A former Dow Jones & Co. board member and three others will pay $24 million to settle charges of trading on inside information about an unsolicited $5 billion buyout offer from News Corp.Â that sent Dow Jones shares up sharply last year, according to a Journal story.

Judith Burns wrote, “Bank of East Asia Chairman and Chief Executive David Li Kwok Po, a former Dow Jones board member, learned of the then-secret News Corp. offer and tipped off his close friend, Michael Leung Kai Hung, according to the SEC. Leung, with the help of his daughter Charlotte Ka On Wong Leung and son-in-law Kan King Wong, bought about $15 million worth of Dow Jones shares, the SEC said in a complaint filed in federal court in Manhattan.

“Regulators said the Leung family members stood to reap about $8 million of illegal profits but were thwarted because the SEC obtained an emergency court order last May freezing their account at Merrill Lynch & Co. and stopping the money from moving offshore.

“News Corp. acquired Dow Jones in December. Its $60 per share offer for the company, which publishes The Wall Street Journal and this newswire, was a hefty premium over the price last spring. Dow Jones stock climbed nearly 60%, to $56.90, when news of the offer was first made public on CNBC.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.