Pfizer has appealed the rejection of a $75 million claim in the SEC’s case against hedge fund Cohen Reuters
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Pfizer (NYSE: ) on Tuesday appealed a federal judge’s refusal to award the drugmaker $75.2 million from a more than decade-old insider trading settlement involving billionaire Steven A. Cohen’s former hedge fund, SAC Capital Management.
The money was left over from SAC’s March 2013 $602 million settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over the trading of drugmakers Wyeth and Elan by Mathew Martoma, who worked at the SAC unit and was later convicted.
Pfizer said it deserves $75.2 million because the neurologist who tipped off Martom about the Alzheimer’s drug trial in 2008 owed a fiduciary duty to Wyeth, which Pfizer bought in 2009, because he was a consultant there.
However, US District Judge Victor Marrero in Manhattan ruled in November that Wyeth was not a victim of Martoma’s trading, and therefore Pfizer was not entitled to any funds left over after Wyeth and Elan investors who lost money were compensated.
Pfizer appealed Marrero’s decision to the Second US Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan. The appeal process often takes several months or longer.
Cohen has not been criminally charged. He changed the name of SAC Capital to Point72 Asset Management in 2014, and is now worth $21.3 billion, according to Forbes magazine.
