British billionaire Joe Lewis charged with insider trading

Tottenham Hotspur owner Joe Lewis, left, with chairman Daniel Levy at a game in 2016. Picture: Reuters

• By CORINNE RAMEY
• THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
• 5:34PM JULY 26, 2023
• NO COMMENTS

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British billionaire Joe Lewis has been indicted on insider-trading charges for allegedly sharing confidential information about companies in which he invested with personal assistants, romantic partners and his pilots.

The tips by Mr Lewis, the owner of the English Premier League soccer club Tottenham Hotspur, allowed these friends and associates to reap millions in profits, prosecutors said. Mr Lewis faces 19 criminal charges, including securities fraud and conspiracy.

David Zornow, a lawyer for Mr Lewis, said his client had travelled to the US voluntarily to face the charges.

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“The government has made an egregious error in judgment in charging Mr Lewis, an 86-year-old man of impeccable integrity and prodigious accomplishment,” Mr Zornow said.

Damian Williams, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said Mr Lewis orchestrated a brazen insider-trading scheme by taking advantage of his access to corporate board rooms.

“He used inside information as a way to compensate his employees or to shower gifts on his friends and lovers,” Mr Williams said in a statement.

From 2013 to 2021, prosecutors said, Mr Lewis engaged in multiple schemes to violate securities laws, including through submitting false filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Mr Lewis also learned confidential information about clinical trials, company announcements and company finances, which he then shared with associates, according to an indictment.

In one case, he provided his pilots loans of $US500,000 each, then encouraged them to buy stock in oncology company Mirati Therapeutics before the news of a clinical trial became public, prosecutors said.

“The Boss has inside info” and “knows the outcome” because “otherwise why would he make us invest”, one pilot, who isn’t named, texted to a friend, the indictment says.

Mr Lewis, who is one of the company’s largest shareholders, also shared information about Mirati with a girlfriend, according to the indictment.

Mirati didn’t respond to a request for comment.