Pak investment banker arrested for passing illegal info

NEW YORK: A Pakistani investment banker working for Credit Suisse was arrested on charges of illegally passing on confidential information to an unidentified banker in Pakistan about nine deals including the $45 billion buyout of Texas energy company.

The 37-year old investment banker, Hafiz Muhammad Zubair Naseem, who was working for the company's energy banking group was arrested on Friday, authorities said.

Credit Suisse was now in the process of dismissing the banker, The New York Times reported.

Expressing "shock" at the incident, the company said it was extremely disappointed that an employee had broken the trust.

According to the complaint, from April 2006 to February this year, Naseem along with others defrauded by executing securities transactions based on material, nonpublic information regarding forthcoming announcements relating to acquisitions of nine publicly traded companies in the US.

Credit Suisse, it said, was engaged to advise either the target company or the acquiring entity in connection with business combination transactions involving the Issuers.

Naseem, the complaint said, would call the conspirator in advance of a public announcement that a particular Issuer was to be acquired by another entity and would provide Credit Suisse inside information to him regarding the acquisition in question.

Shortly after receiving such a call, the co-conspirator would purchase securities in that Issuer. Following public disclosure that an Issuer was being acquired the co-conspirator would quickly sell all of the securities he had purchased in advance of the public disclosures.