NEW YORK: The Brunswick Group suspended partner Nina Devlin, whose husband, Matthew Devlin, was charged last week with insider trading, with pay on December 19 pending the results of an internal review, Jennifer Lowney, director at Brunswick, confirmed.
A Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) complaint alleges that Matthew Devlin "traded on and tipped at least four of his clients and friends with inside information about 13 impending corporate transactions" that he gleaned from his wife's activities.
The communications firm and Nina Devlin are not named as defendants in the suits, which were filed by both federal prosecutors and the SEC. In a statement released to PRWeek, Nina Devlin's lawyer, Jim Benjamin, a partner at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, said that his client was "completely unaware that confidential information about her job was being used as the basis for securities trading."
Dow Chemical suspended its relationship with Brunswick on December 19, pending US Department of Justice and SEC investigations. Deals worked on by Brunswick, which Matthew Devlin allegedly "obtained material nonpublic information" on include Dow's acquisition of Rohm Hass, InBev's acquisition of Anheuser-Busch, and the failed Electronic Arts hostile takeover of Take Two.
