The Federal Court in Sydney has sentenced former investment manager Rodney Forrest to six years in prison for insider trading and persuading others to trade in more than AUS$3m of Platinum Asset Management.
Forrest was found to have secretly accessed the computer of chair of Regal Partners without permission and photographed confidential takeover documents in August 2024. He then traded and procured others to trade in Platinum shares before leaking details of the takeover to the media, making over $300,000 profit for himself.
Forrest was sentenced to five years imprisonment for insider trading and two years for procuring others to trade, with one year of the procuring offence to be served with the insider trading offence. He will be eligible for parole on 22 January 2029.
The sentence also accounted for a further offence whereby Forrest provided unlicensed financial services as an investment funds manager to two entities over a nine-month period.
The verdict marks the first outcome for ASIC’s new specialist insider trading team which investigated and finalised the case within 16 months of the offending after ASIC’s market surveillance team detected Forrest’s suspicious trading activity in September 2024.
ASIC Chair Joe Longo said the prosecution of insider trading was an enduring priority for ASIC.
“Mr Forrest’s actions were a brazen breach of trust and exploitation, and his imprisonment today reflects the seriousness of his crime. While some insider trading cases can take several years, Mr Forrest went from crime to jail time in just over a year, underscoring ASIC’s determination to fast-track criminal cases of this type.”
