SAC Capital money manager Michael Steinberg was trained to spot insider trading.
Steinberg, who is on trial for conspiracy to commit securities fraud, attended three training sessions on the topic run by SAC’s compliance department, an SAC executive said in court Tuesday.
John Casey, a member of the $14 billion hedge fund’s compliance team, testified in a Manhattan federal court that SAC gave employees explicit rules about what it believed constituted insider trading and told them to ask compliance to put stocks on the firm’s restricted list if there was any doubt about the matter.
But Casey said he was not aware that Steinberg had ever made any such a request.
One of Steinberg’s former analysts, Jon Horvath, has confessed to insider trading in several tech stocks between 2007 and 2009 while at the firm.
The government’s star witness, he is expected to testify that he fed insider-trading tips to Steinberg, who knew they were illegal.
Horvath, who glanced nervously over at his former boss as he walked through the courtroom to the witness stand Tuesday, began his testimony around 4:30. It is expected to last for several days.
The 44-year-old Canadian citizen, who faced 45 years in prison when he agreed to cooperate with the feds, confessed that he had been arrested as a teenager for stealing prescription drugs from a pharmacy where he worked. The arrest record has been expunged, he said.