SEC says couple bought Dow Jones stock using inside info

The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged two Hong Kong residents with purchasing $15 million worth of Dow Jones & Co. stock using inside information before it was disclosed the company had received an offer to be bought for $5 billion by News Corp., according to an AP story.

Larry Neumeister wrote, “The lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Manhattan named as defendants Kan King Wong and Charlotte Ka On Wong Leung, a married couple. It alleged they made ‘highly profitable and highly suspicious’ stock purchases based on inside information between April 13 and April 30.

“The lawsuit did not explain how the couple would have obtained inside information on the pending offer. There was no information on whether the couple has a lawyer in the United States. A message left with the SEC lawyer who filed the lawsuit was not immediately returned.

“According to the lawsuit, Wong and his wife bought 415,000 shares of Dow Jones stock in the two weeks prior to the May 1 announcement that News Corp. had offered to buy Dow Jones.

“The purchases occurred while the couple possessed material non-public information about the offer of News Corp. to acquire Dow Jones, the lawsuit said.”

Read more here. Dow Jones owns The Wall Street Journal, Marketwatch and Barron’s.