Business

Insider trading probe targets top Goldman manager: report

Federal criminal authorities are investigating whether a top Goldman Sachs Group manager passed inside information about technology stocks to the firm’s hedge-fund clients, people close to the situation told The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday.

The latest development drags Wall Street’s most high-profile securities firm into the government’s insider-trading investigation, which has reportedly expanded to target about 120 individuals.

David Loeb, a Goldman managing director who acts as a middleman between the Wall Street firm and some of its most important hedge-fund clients, is the latest Goldman official to come under investigation.

Former Goldman director, Rajat Gupta, is set to go to trial on insider-trading charges in May related to allegations he provided hedge-fund manager Raj Rajaratnam information about Goldman’s business at the height of the financial crisis.

The WSJ reported Monday that the FBI is seeking to expand its insider trading probe to target more than 100 individuals on and off Wall Street.

“We’ve identified them, and now of course we have to build a case around that,” David Chaves, a senior FBI agent, said Monday in an interview following a presentation to reporters at FBI headquarters in Manhattan.

The government currently is investigating whether about 240 individuals, including hedge-fund traders and company insiders, improperly shared insider information, Chaves said.

Roughly half of those, or 120, are “targets,” meaning the government is actively building cases against them, according to Chaves, who oversees one of two white-collar crime squads handling the New York-based insider trading investigations.