Anavex Life Sciences Corp (AVXL)

[XenaLives]

Not true.. THEY have their sources...

Just a buy signal. If you didn't hear anything...no one else did.

Many more examples, but FDA leaks are a time honored tradition. Note that the lobbyists involved are on the same crew as those who authored the Obama Healthcare bill. We need legislators who make laws, not lobbyists.

Excerpts below:

GRAND JURY INVESTIGATES FDA LEAKS
By S, ra Sugawara and Paul W. Valentine April 3, 1991
A federal grand jury is investigating whether Food and Drug Administration officials have leaked confidential information about new drug approvals to investors who then used the information to make illegal insider-trading profits, sources said yesterday.

An FDA spokesman confirmed the probe. Syndicated columnist Jack Anderson reported yesterday that FDA officials are suspected of passing along the information to a California brokerage house in return for compensation.

Stocks of drug companies often soar when they receive approval for major new drugs. An investor with inside knowledge of upcoming FDA approval could profit by buying stock before the FDA publicly announces its decision and then selling after the news has driven up the price.

The FDA approves approximately 800 new drugs and other products annually, including about 20 to 30 so-called "breakthrough" drugs

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1991/04/03/grand-jury-investigates-fda-leaks/ee6d5ed9-24e3-4845-9702-c35815b07bc7/?utm_term=.32843163c3bc

Former FDA Deputy Director Charged With Insider Trading for Leaking Non-Public Approval Information
Posted 15 June 2016 | By Zachary Brennan


A former Deputy Director of the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Office of Generic Drugs (OGD) was charged on Wednesday for providing tips on drug approvals to three hedge fund managers that made tens of millions off of the non-public information.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced the charges of insider trading against two hedge fund managers and their source, Gordon Johnston, who worked for a dozen years at FDA and leaked approval information to two of the hedge fund managers, one of whom reaped unlawful profits of nearly $32 million for hedge funds investing in health care securities.

https://www.raps.org/regulatory-focus%E2%84%A2/news-articles/2016/6/former-fda-deputy-director-charged-with-insider-trading-for-leaking-non-public-approval-information

5/17/2018 Deerfield Partners Snared in Probe of Leaking Consultants - Bloomberg

A wide-ranging U.S. probe into under-the-radar information links between Washington and Wall Street snared three hedge fund executives, a D.C. consultant and a government employee, who are accused of profiting off inside information about changes in health-care regulations.

The prosecution takes aim at the political intelligence industry in Washington, in which consultants -- often former government employees themselves -- nurture ex-colleagues for information about potentially market-moving decisions, and relay that to hedge fund traders and others in exchange for lucrative consulting fees.

That’s what prosecutors in Manhattan accused three partners at Deerfield Management, a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services employee and David Blaszczak, a former CMS worker with his own D.C. consulting firm, of doing.
D.C. political consultant also charged with insider trading Deerfield is a $7 billion fund that invests in health care

They were all charged with fraud Wednesday, accused of profiting on trades with the help of advance knowledge about pending decisions by CMS to cut coverage for a certain kind of cancer treatment and to increase payments for kidney dialysis.

Deerfield, a $7 billion investment advisory firm focused exclusively on the health-care industry, is one of hundreds of hedge funds that have hired D.C. consultants who have an inside track on CMS reimbursement decisions. Those can mean millions of dollars in gained or lost revenue for companies that make medical devices or provide health-care services.

Deerfield is the second hedge fund with ties to Blaszczak to find itself in the crosshairs of federal prosecutors. Earlier this year, in the trial of a former credit portfolio manager at Visium AssetManagement, Blaszczak’s name surfaced in trial testimony as the source of insider information that was used by the firm to shape trading stratey.

According to an indictment handed down Wednesday, from 2012 to 2014 Blaszczak used his close personal relationships with former colleagues at CMS to get advance knowledge of pending decisions and passed them on to his clients at Deerfield.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-24/d-c-consultant-charged-with-leaking-cms-rulings-to-hedge-funds

Visium's Valvani charged with insider trading on FDA leaks
Jonathan Stempel


NEW YORK (Reuters) - A Manhattan hedge fund manager was charged on Wednesday with trading on confidential tips about drug approvals, in one of the biggest insider trading cases since a 2014 court ruling made it harder for U.S. prosecutors to pursue them.

U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara in Manhattan accused Sanjay Valvani of Visium Asset Management LP of fraudulently making $25 million by gaining advance word about U.S. Food and Drug Administration approvals of generic drug applications.

Prosecutors said the inside information was provided by Gordon Johnston, a consultant who got tips from a friend and former FDA colleague still working at the agency.

Valvani passed some of these tips to Christopher Plaford, then a Visium portfolio manager, who made his own illegal trades, prosecutors said.

“Sadly these are schemes we see time and time again, where lies and use of non-public information profits those conducting the crimes, and everyday investors lose out,” FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge Diego Rodriguez said in a statement.

Prosecutors also accused Plaford and Stefan Lumiere, another former Visium portfolio manager, of fraudulently inflating the value and liquidity of a bond fund they oversaw by getting “sham” price quotations from brokers, in an effort to prevent investors from demanding their money back.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fraud-insidertrading-idUSKCN0Z11TB

Four charged with trading on U.S. health agency leaks face trial
April 02, 2018, 06:00:00 AM EDT By Reuters

NEW YORK, April 2 (Reuters) - A Washington political consultant, a federal government employee and two former partners at an investment advisory firm are set to face trial on Monday on federal charges that they ran an insider trading scheme based on leaks from within a federal healthcare agency.

Jurors in federal court in Manhattan are expected to hear opening statements from prosecutors and from lawyers for David Blaszczak, founder of Precipio Health Strategies; Rob Olan and Ted Huber, formerly partners at Deerfield Management; and Christopher Worrall, who worked for the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).


The four defendants were arrested in May 2017 and have pleaded not guilty. Lawyers for Huber and Worrall declined to comment. Lawyers for Blaszczak and Olan could not immediately be reached.

Prosecutors said in an indictment that Blaszczak previously worked at CMS and kept up a relationship with Worrall after he left. They said Worrall's illegal tips to Blaszczak included advance notice about rules cutting reimbursement rates for radiation cancer treatment and dialysis, allowing Deerfield to profit by trading in companies affected by the rules.

The companies involved included radiation oncology companies Accuray Inc and Varian Medical Systems, and dialysis companies DaVita Healthcare Partners Inc, NxStage Medical Inc and Fresenius Medical Care, a unit of Fresenius Medical Care AG of Germany, according to the indictment.

Prosecutors said the scheme ran from about 2009 to 2014.

https://www.nasdaq.com/article/four-charged-with-trading-on-us-health-agency-leaks-face-trial-20180402-00096