Federal Judge Victor Marrero has rejected Pfizer's effort to recover $75.2 million left over from a settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in an insider trading case linked to billionaire Steven A. Cohen. The court ruled that the pharmaceutical company Wyeth, which Pfizer bought in 2009, was not a victim of the financial fraud that was at the heart of the case and therefore not entitled to the funds.
Judge Marrero ordered that the amount in question be transferred to the account of the US Treasury, as requested by the SEC. Pfizer $PFE and its attorneys have not yet commented on the verdict.
The case involved a $602 million civil settlement reached by the SAC over Wyeth and pharmaceutical company Elan's stock trading. The trades were made by Mathew Martoma, who worked for a unit of SAC and was later convicted of insider trading. He obtained this information from a neurologist, Sidney Gilman, who was involved in a clinical trial of an Alzheimer's drug in 2008.
SAC…