Financial regulators in Ontario are sharing new information regarding allegations of insider trading related to the 2014 sale of Amaya Gaming.
This latest information focuses mostly on the dealings of employees at an investment firm called Aston Hill Financial. Aston Hill Financial was one of the companies that Amaya Gaming chose to help finance Amaya Gaming’s purchase of the Rational Group, which included the acquisition of PokerStars.
Apparently, Aston Hill Financial employees, including company president Benedict Chang, were so impressed with the deal that they wanted their clients to get in the action. According to the Ontario Securities Commission, Chang pushed senior VP John David Rothstein to share that privileged information with select clients.
The clients who allegedly received the forbidden facts were quick to act on the tip. An investor named Frank Soave was tipped to the deal and immediately purchased 5,000 Amaya Gaming shares at $12.10 (CD) a piece. Hours later, Amaya Gaming prices spiked so high that trading was halted. (Whether this indicates other potential insider trades or suspicion of insider trades is unclear.)
What is clear is that Soave’s move was a profitable one. Just 24 hours later he sold his Amaya Gaming shares for $19.78 (CD) each, realizing a profit of $38,000 (CD). That’s a heft 63% return on investment.
Soave and the other Aston Hill Financial clients who allegedly received the insider information were selected because they had lost money on previous tips from the company’s traders, according to a report from Reuters.
Authorities in Ontario have also accused Aston Hill Financial CEO Eric Tremblay of lying to them about the situation during the investigation.
The Ontario Securities Commission will be holding a hearing on the matter on May 4.
It’s unclear at this time whether this new information will have any impact on the pending charges of financial fraud that have been leveled against former Amaya Gaming CEO David Baazov.