Matt Levine, Columnist

Some Trades Are Shady, Not All Are Illegal

Using information that no one else has to make money is sort of the point.

February 1, 2018 at 2:00 AM EST

Matt Levine is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A former investment banker at Goldman Sachs, he was a mergers and acquisitions lawyer at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz; a clerk for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit; and an editor of Dealbreaker.

It's easy to be suspicious.
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If you bought short-dated out-of-the-money call options on Bioverativ, Inc. stock, just before its January 22 announcement that it will be acquired for $105 per share (a 63.8 percent premium) by Sanofi, then you did pretty well. According to the Securities and Exchange Commission, someone did:

"The identities of the Defendants are not yet known because the options purchase orders originated through a foreign brokerage firm located in Zurich, Switzerland," and the SEC's insider trading complaint seeks to freeze their assets and reveal their identities.

Before it’s here, it’s on the Bloomberg Terminal

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