Insider Trading
The U.S. Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into whether top officials at Equifax violated insider-trading laws when they sold stock before the company disclosed that it had been hacked, according to people familiar with the investigation. The SEC has been working with those prosecutors on the investigation, according to another person familiar with the matter.
At Tuesday’s hearing, Clayton faced multiple questions over how the SEC can ensure there won’t be a breach of the Consolidated Audit Trail, an enormous database of equity trades that is being built to give regulators better transparency into markets. He responded that the SEC is committed to ensuring the security of proprietary information, adding that the agency won’t ask firms to turn over more data than it needs.
Regarding the breach into the SEC’s Edgar system, Clayton said he’s ordered the agency’s inspector general to conduct an investigation of who at the agency knew what and when they knew it. Clayton said he has “no indication” that his predecessor, Mary Jo White, was aware of the incident.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.