A panel of the Ontario Securities Commission has recently released its unanimous decision in dismissing allegations by OSC Staff of insider trading by Kwok Yuen Ho, the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of ATI Technologies Inc., and his wife Betty. Three issues that were discussed by the OSC in the ATI decision are relevant to corporate insiders and are worth reviewing.
Use of E-mail Messages as Evidence in Insider Trading Cases
The first issue of interest discussed in ATI is the use of e-mail messages as evidence. In this case, Staff attempted to use e-mail messages authored by Mr. Ho and others at ATI to prove that Mr. Ho had inside information (knowledge that ATI would not achieve its projected earnings for Q-3 2000) at the time he traded in the company’s securities. Staff did not call the authors of those e-mails to the witness stand, and as a result the authors of the e-mails could not be cross-examined by the lawyers for Mr. and Mrs. Ho.
