OSC to retry Rankin

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. That appears to be the motto of the Ontario Securities Commission, which has decided to take Andrew Rankin back to court for stock tipping.

“The Ontario Securities Commission took steps today to commence a new trial against Andrew Rankin on 10 counts of tipping,” the OSC said in a terse press release issued on Thursday afternoon.

Rankin was an executive with RBC DS’s mergers and acquisitions division. The OSC alleges that, between 1999 and 2001, Rankin gave insider information about companies he was dealing with to his longtime friend Daniel Duic, who subsequently profited by trading in 10 of those companies, which included Canadian Pacific Railway and Moffat Communications.

The Rankin case had gained notoriety as a failed attempt by the Canadian securities regulator to prosecute insider trading.

When the OSC charged Duic with insider trading, he offered his testimony against Rankin for immunity and a settlement agreement that allowed him to keep some of his illegal profits. In the first trial against Rankin, Duic admitted that he made $4.5 million on tips that came directly from Rankin.

Initially, Rankin was found guilty on 10 counts of stock tipping in October of 2005; however, the decision was overturned in November of 2006 by the Ontario Superior Court, which declared that the first trial judge had made errors in the decision.

The OSC appealed the Superior Court’s decision but lost and was faced with the choice of either dropping the charges or starting a new trial.

Filed by Mark Noble, Advisor.ca, mark.noble@advisor.rogers.com