Mr Gilman Edwin Wong, the former Chief Executive Officer and Director of Sirtex Medical Limited, has been sentenced in the District Court of New South Wales having pleaded guilty to an offence of insider trading ().
Appearing before His Honour Judge Bennett SC, Mr Wong, of Sydney, was sentenced to one year and six months’ imprisonment to be immediately released on recognisance of $10,000 to be of good behaviour for three years. By reason of his conviction, Mr Wong is also disqualified from managing corporations for a period of five years.
On 26 October 2016 while in possession of inside information concerning Sirtex’s sales, Mr Wong sold 74,968 Sirtex shares for an average price of $28.56 per share, totaling $2,141,086.08.
On 9 December 2016, Sirtex released a Trading Update on the ASX downgrading its growth forecasts for the 2017 financial year in light of sales figures in the year to date period. Following the announcement, the opening price of Sirtex shares fell to $13.01, a decrease of approximately 49% from the previous day’s closing price of $25.49. The value of the Sirtex shares had they been sold at the volume weighted average price (VWAP) on 9 December 2016, would have been $1,120,412.80
The matter was prosecuted by the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions.
Background
Between 24 May 2005 and 13 January 2017, Mr Wong was the CEO of Sirtex, and was a director of Sirtex from 28 June 2005 to 13 January 2017. Prior to its sale in early 2018 Sirtex was in the S&P/ASX 200 index, an index that represents the ASX top 200 companies by way of market capitalisation.
In his capacity of CEO and director of Sirtex, Mr Wong was aware of confidential information relating to the global dose sales of Sirtex’s product, SIR-Spheres.
At the time Mr Wong sold his Sirtex shares on 26 October 2016, he was in possession of inside information, namely, actual dosage sales of Sirtex’s product, SIR-Spheres, for the period July to October 2016, which was not generally available, but if it had been, a reasonable person would have expected it to have a material effect on the price or value of Sirtex’s shares.
On 25 September 2018, Mr Wong was charged with one count of insider trading under the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) ().
