Question

Here is the scenario.

1. Your work at a brokerage where you buy and sell stocks/bonds/mutual funds for various business customers.

2. On Monday, you get a call from one of your long term customers. They tell you the following:

a. They are seeking to start a new business venture in the digital security market. One of the partners has access to a new government encryption technology that could be adapted for the consumer market. Nobody else has such access.

b. If your client starts this new business, they have a very good shot at really controlling the market for this product. However, they are worried about copying the government technology. Even if they get away with cloning the security protocols, the new company would have continued insider knowledge of enhancements to the technology and then be able to improve the consumer version.

c. Because they have the ability to acquire, consistently, inside information from the government source, they can basically wipe out any competition...very quickly.

d. The client knows they are sitting on a major multi-billion dollar goldmine but are not sure about how to proceed.

QUESTIONS TO ANSWER

Very simply, what do you tell your client?

What business laws could be broken?

What are the positive and negative issues to the consumer?

If YOU WERE THE CLIENT....what would you do knowing that you were about 99% sure you could get away with it and make a fortune for at least a few years.

at least 2-3 total paragraphs in your answer at the minimum.

Answer 1

In such scenario I would suggest my customer to drop this idea of partnership.

Even if they start the business and start trading with such information then they will breach the law of insider trading which does not allow trading with the information in hand which are not available for general public.

For this customer the positive is they have the knowledge which is highly confidential but the negative is that under the purview of law they are not legally allowed to use such information for their betterment.

If I were the client then I would understand the law first, and very clearly get the information on what is allowed and what is not allowed under the law then after I will inform the partner for not going forward as per their scheme and will opt for some other business which is as per state law.