BOSTON, Sept 10 (Askume) – An employee of French drugmaker Ipsen (IPN.PA) engaged in illegal trading based on inside information he received about his company’s planned acquisition of cancer drugmaker Epizyme in 2022, the agency said on Friday.
Ipsen’s director of data strategy and operations, Dishant Gupta, plans to plead guilty to securities fraud and settle related claims brought by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, according to documents filed in federal court in Boston on Tuesday .
The petition is scheduled for a hearing on Oct. 8. An attorney for the 40-year-old New Jersey resident did not respond to a request for comment.
Ipsen said it does not comment on legal matters involving current or former employees and is focused on complying with applicable laws.
At a meeting in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in March 2022, a top Ipsen executive asked Gupta to help untangle information related to an unnamed pharmaceutical company’s potential acquisition of cancer drugs and the company’s assets, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said that a few days later, he met with Ipsen executives to discuss potential acquisitions in the oncology market, and that by April 7, 2022, Gupta knew that the cancer drugs and assets Ipsen wanted to acquire were from Cambridge Biotech Epizyme maker of the anti-cancer drug Tazverik.
Starting that day, he began buying Epizyme stock in his wife’s brokerage account, according to the indictment. He bought more shares in the days that followed as the two companies discussed the possibility of a full acquisition of Epizyme, prosecutors said.
According to prosecutors and the SEC, Gupta began conducting relentless Internet searches that led authorities to say he was aware of the potential deal, including searches such as “Epizyme acquisition” and “Epizyme takeover.”
Ipsen announced on June 27, 2022, that it would acquire Epizyme for US$247 million. Prosecutors said Gupta later sold all of his shares in Epizyme, making a profit of more than $262,000.
