Judge Approves Pfizer, SEC Settlement Tied to Insider Trading at Cohen Hedge Fund

A federal judge on Thursday awarded Pfizer $29 million to resolve a dispute with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission stemming from the regulator’s 2013 insider trading settlement with billionaire Steven A. Cohen’s former hedge fund SAC Capital Management.

The payout approved by U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero in Manhattan was part of the $75.2 million left over from SAC’s $601.8 million settlement over trades in drugmakers Wyeth and Elan by Mathew Martoma, a former SAC employee later sentenced to nine years in prison for securities fraud and conspiracy.

Marrero had ruled in November 2024 that all the money should go to the U.S. Treasury because Wyeth, which Pfizer bought in 2009, wasn’t one of Martoma’s victims.

Pfizer appealed, saying it deserved the $75.2 million because a neurologist who tipped Martoma about a 2008 Alzheimer’s drug trial owed Wyeth a fiduciary duty.

The New York-based drugmaker agreed to drop that appeal in exchange for the $29 million. The U.S. Treasury will get the remaining $46.2 million.

Cohen was not criminally charged. He changed SAC Capital’s name to Point72 Asset Management in 2014.

(Reporting by Stempel in New York; editing by Edward Tobin)