Oh Bus-Org, How You Rear Your Head

I was skimming the Precedent, and came across this article:

Executive couples must be careful to keep confidences
Vulnerable to charges of insider trading
by: Vern Krishna, Financial Post

Caught my eye, because our Bus-Org prof always jokes (kind of) with us ... "if you're going to act opportunistically ... ESPECIALLY DON'T TELL YOUR SPOUSE"

Here's a quote from the article:

An "insider" is a director, officer or senior employee of a corporation. A trade is improper where an insider buys or sells the corporation's securities based on material confidential information "Insider" also includes "tippees" -- individuals who receive improper information from insiders.

Typically, insiders have privileged access to confidential information that is not available to the general investing public. Thus, in a sense, they are fiduciaries responsible for the management of corporate information in the best interests of the corporation. That is the theory.

Unfortunately, that is not the theory. Insiders have fiduciary obligation because they have limited access to corporate resources that they could opportunistically divert. Fiduciary is not a best-interest obligation, it is the obligation not to act in your own interests without permission.

The article gets it right here, though:

It is improper, however, to use confidential information for personal profit or to pass the information on to friends.

The rest of the article has some good points too.

Ah ... Bus-Org ... how you creep into every facet of my life. Here I was, just trying to skim some legal gossip ... sigh.