The Wall Street Journal | By: Nicole Hong | August 23, 2017:

 Judges reject former SAC Capital Advisors manager Mathew Martoma’s request for new trial:

Prosecutors recovered lost ground in their fight against insider trading with a court decision Wednesday upholding the 2014 conviction of former SAC Capital Advisors LLP portfolio manager Mathew Martoma.

The Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Manhattan found that the government no longer needs to show a “meaningfully close personal relationship” between the provider of insider information and the recipient of the tip. The 2-1 ruling rejects part of a 2014 decision in the Second Circuit that had imposed this requirement.

Chief Judge Robert Katzmann wrote, as an example, that a businessman who gives an inside tip to his doorman as an end-of-year gift would be committing illegal insider trading, even if he and the doorman aren’t close friends.

The ruling once again thrusts Mr. Martoma’s case and the contentious area of insider-trading law into the spotlight. Mr. Martoma, 43 years old, is serving a nine-year prison sentence after a jury convicted him of trading on inside information provided by two doctors about the trial of an Alzheimer’s drug, which netted $275 million in profits and avoided losses.

He appealed and said he deserved a new trial after the 2014 decision, known as U.S. v. Newman, which found that prosecutors must prove the tipster and trader had a close personal relationship and that the tipster gained a tangible reward for passing along the information.

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