Sun Microsystems co-founder charged with insider trading

A Silicon Valley heavyweight has been charged with insider trading by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Andreas "Andy" Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems and an early Google investor, is accused of using his knowledge of Cisco's 2019 acquisition of Acacia Communications to buy options in Acacia using the …

[Korev]

Bechtolsheim has agreed to pay a civil penalty of $923,740 for earning slightly more than half that for his illegal trades, and has also agreed to be barred from serving as an officer or director of a public company for five years.

Forbes lists Bechtolsheim's net worth at somewhere north of $16 billion. The SEC fine is less than 0.006 percent of his holdings.

The banning is quite a punishment for something that made ~$450k, I wonder why anyone with that kind of money would risk their career for what is insignificant to them

[Youngone]

He's worth something like $16 billion. He hasn't been punished in any real sense.

[DS999]

I wonder why anyone with that kind of money would risk

Because he didn't think he would be caught, and if he was caught he would get a tiny slap on the wrist compared to what would happen to you or me.

He was wrong on the first belief, but 100% correct on the second. The only thing that would deter someone worth $16 billion from insider trading is the threat of jail. Why did Martha Stewart deserve to serve time while he got off with a ban and meaningless five year ban?

[CowHorseFrog]

Have you read american media ?

THey treat ceos and founders as gods, so they treat everyone else with contempt, look at Boeing

[Charlie Clark]

She took it to court and lost.

[An_Old_Dog]

Risk

How do you think Andy got that $16B? Answer: by recognizing opportunities to profit and exploiting them. To him, this was just another opportunity. (I'm not suggesting all, or even most, of his money was earned 'the dirty way'. I am suggesting that he's a opportunity-detecting, opportunity-exploiting machine. Sharks are like that, too.)

At least one psychological study (sorry I have no link) has found that high-level executives perceive risk differently than most other people.

[DS999]

Re: Risk

At least one psychological study (sorry I have no link) has found that high-level executives perceive risk differently than most other people

Multiple psychological studies have shown that high level executives are much more likely than the general public to show multiple traits of a psychopath. People who have are less able to gauge risk and lack empathy for others may do things most of us wouldn't but that thing, if successful, could result in big windfall.

Remember when you read about the billionaires who made all/most of their fortune themselves you are reading about the ones who took big risks that paid off, or were simply lucky. One exec is worth billions because was employee #6 at Amazon or Google, while another was employee #6 at a company competing with Amazon or Google so you've never heard of him.

One guy pitched his startup to the VCs at the right time when the market he was going for was red hot and at the top of Gartner "hype cycle", and cashed out for hundreds of millions and leveraged that into bigger investments in the future. The other guy pitched his nearly identical startup to the VCs a month later, after they already had a bet on that market segment and wanted to look in a different direction for their next bet so you've never heard of him.

Now maybe someone will want to argue that a few special guys like Jobs or Musk would have been successful no matter what, and I won't dispute the idea that some really are measurably different/better than the rest in important enough ways that it wasn't just luck that got them where they were. But most of the ones who you read about collecting huge payouts like the current CEOs of Microsoft, Google, and Apple while they may be way better at being a high level exec than you or I would, aren't necessarily all that much better than a quarter million other high or mid level execs all over the world that no one has ever heard of. They were just in the right place at the right time, and/or took a massive risk or two at some point that really paid off.

[CowHorseFrog]

Because people like that are psychopaths. THey will do anything for a dollar, just look at the Boeing management.

[Charlie Clark]

If he's not currently on a board, he's probably not interested in being on one.

The key thing is that he has decided to settle out of court and take the punishment rather than risk the consequences of a court judgement, including potential civil suits. As it is, this is done and dusted and he can get on with enjoying his hobbies.

[Anonymous Coward]

i presume his hobby is being a greedy twat?

[Snake]

the clause in the contract

..."and has also agreed to be barred from serving as an officer or director of a public company for five years."

A public company. Giving him all the benefits of simply finding / starting a private-owned company, let's say a private mutual fund, and starting the entire cycle all over again.

Thank you, American capitalism. You've done it [to the rest of us] again.