BOSTON –The Securities and Exchange Commission charged a Massachusetts hedge-fund manager, a former Citizens Bank employee and three other defendants with trading on advance knowledge of Citizens Financial Group Inc.’s 2004 announcement that it was acquiring Charter One Financial Inc., netting profits of more than $750,000.
The SEC’s complaint alleges that, in late April and early May 2004, Shengnan Wang, then an employee of Citizens, learned that Citizens was performing final due diligence for the acquisition of Charter One, based in Cleveland.
According to the complaint, Wang conveyed the information to her husband, Hai Liu, and to Michael Tom, a former employee of Citizens who ran a hedge fund, Global Time Capital Management LLC of Burlington, Mass., in which Wang and her husband had invested approximately $60,000.
