Powerful Wall Street investment banker Perk Hixon is expected to plead guilty Wednesday afternoon to insider trading charges.
The former Evercore Partners senior managing director used illegal inside information from 2010 to 2013 to trade shares through accounts of an ex-girlfriend and his father to net nearly $1 million in profits, prosecutors charged in a Feb. 21 complaint.
Hixon allegedly used some of the illegal cash to pay child support to the ex-girlfriend, the mother of his 5-year-old daughter, the Securities and Exchange Commission alleged in a separate civil suit.
While hedge fund traders making money on inside information have made headlines recently, it is much rarer for a banker who negotiates mergers to be charged with illegally profiting from that knowledge.
Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara charged Hixon with seven counts of fraud and one count of making false statements.
Frank Perkins Hixon Jr., known as Perk, worked in Evercore’s mining and metals group from 2010 until he was fired in January.