News Release
Company director and spouse who traded on inside information settle with commission
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Date:
2002-12-24 -
Number:
2002/76
Vancouver – A director of an Alberta-based company registered in B.C. and his spouse have settled with the B.C. Securities Commission after it was revealed that they pocketed close to $108,000 from trading shares of the company based on insider information.
Under the settlement, Alwyn Christopher Dales Wright – a director of Velvet Exploration Ltd., a Toronto Stock Exchange-listed company – has been banned from the securities market for four years subject to conditions. He has also been barred from acting as a director or officer of any issuer for four years and he must pay the commission $34,000.
Catharine Bruce Wright, Christopher’s spouse, has also been banned from the securities market for four years subject to conditions and must pay $24,000.
The pair must also turn over $107,937.50, a sum that represents the profits of the trading on inside information, to the commission.
The couple admitted that from April 20, 2001 to June 14, 2001, Christopher directed his wife, Catharine, to buy shares of Velvet based on information that Velvet was in negotiations to be taken over by El Paso Corp. Christopher learned of this yet-to-be publicly disclosed information through his position as an insider of Velvet.
In the settlement, Christopher acknowledged that he directed Catharine to buy shares of Velvet on two occasions:
· On June 11, 2001, Catharine purchased 50,000 Velvet shares at an average price of $6.76 a share after Christopher learned at a Velvet board meeting that El Paso was prepared to make a cash offer of $8.15 a share for all of Velvet’s common shares.
El Paso’s acquisition of Velvet’s shares was not announced until June 14, 2001 in a news release after Velvet’s board of directors had approved the deal. On June 14 following the announcement, Catharine sold the Velvet shares that she had earlier acquired at a profit.
The B.C. Securities Commission is the independent provincial government agency responsible for regulating trading in securities and exchange contracts within the province. Copies of the settlement can be viewed in the documents database of the commission’s website www.bcsc.bc.ca or by contacting Andrew Poon, Media Relations, 604-899-6880.