From Humble Beginnings

“Dear Sir: please be informed that two of your executives from the Caracas office are trading with inside information. A copie with description of ther trades so far has been submitet to the S.E.C. by separate mail. As is mantion on that letter if us customers do not benefit from their knoleg, we wonder who surveils the trades done by account executives. Upon you investigating to the last consequencies we will provide with the names of the insider on their owne hand writing.”

Ask yourself how much credence you would give the letter I just quoted if this landed in YOUR inbox. Would you have given it a cursory review and then thrown it out? It would be tempting to dismiss this as a poorly written note worthy of only the recycle bin or shredder.

Having answered my first question, I now ask you to identify this letter. This document (sent to Merrill Lynch compliance officials) was the catalyst for the S.E.C.’s investigation into the insider trading scandal of the late 1980’s. It started the chain of events that led to the prosecution of such Wall Street titans as Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken.

The Black Rod once again unearths another juicy Crocus morsel. While the spate of recently leaked Crocus documents have been dismissed by many, as shown above, we ignore even the most seemingly innocuous correspondence at our peril.

Another lesson to be drawn from the novel Den of Thieves (a brilliant tome on the aforementioned insider trading scandal) is that the first mover advantage goes to those who cut deals before anyone else. If anything untoward did indeed go on at Crocus, I would recommend all potentially implicated individuals read about what fate befell the ones who held out instead of jumping ship post haste.

For the sake of all Manitobans, I sincerely hope that there is nothing to the Crocus story. Until a public inquiry is called, however, a black cloud looms large over our capital markets, much to the detriment of any entrepreneur who wishes to make his or her fortunes in Manitoba. Manitoba Means Business? Not until Today’s NDP restores faith in our markets…