Former investment analyst pleads guilty to insider trading in securities of Big Un Limited (ASIC, 2020)

Judgment entered

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ASIC reported in September 2020 that Michael Ho was sentenced in the Sydney Downing Centre District Court to three years imprisonment, served by an intensive correction order, after pleading guilty to five counts of insider trading and one of communicating inside information in Big Un shares.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

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Total relief

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Alleged gain

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A dash means the release did not state a figure we could extract, not that the figure is zero. Penalty and disgorgement are stored separately so aggregates across the library do not double-count the same dollars.

What is alleged to have happened

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission announced the plea on February 25, 2020 as release 20-045MR.

Ho admitted trading between July 2016 and February 2018 while holding inside information passed to him by the company's chief executive, and communicating it once to an associate. He and associates he procured invested about A$1.6 million in Big Un securities. The release says he cooperated with the investigation and the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions was prosecuting.

The original plea release records no sentence and no money; the sentence is described below.

Outcome. ASIC release 20-209MR (published September 11, 2020) reports that Judge Michael King SC sentenced Ho to three years, to be served under an intensive correction order, after his guilty plea to the counts described in release 20-045MR. The judge applied a 50 percent discount for his cooperation and early plea, and the release says he invested about A$1.6 million in Big Un securities while holding information from the company's chief executive. The Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions prosecuted the case. The release states no fine or other financial penalty. The sentencing date is not stated, so the release date is used.

What technique is this, and how does it work?

This action is tagged with one technique in our taxonomy. The tagging is ours: regulators charge statutory provisions, not technique names, so the mapping is an editorial judgement described in our editorial policy.

• Insider trading — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2020-02-25 ASIC media release
2. 2020-09-11 ASIC reports Ho sentenced to three years by intensive correction order

Primary documents

Everything on this page derives from the documents below. Where our summary and the primary document disagree, the primary document is right.

• ASIC media release
• ASIC release 20-209MR (sentence)

The linked release is published by the issuing regulator under its own terms. Our summary and narrative above are our own writing.

Same matter

The library links these 2 records because they appear to concern one matter: the same lead defendant, an overlapping technique tag and close filing dates, or a shared court docket or a release that cites the other. Records are listed by date filed.

This grouping is the library's, made by matching names, techniques, dates and citations when the site is built. It is not the regulator's or a court's determination that the records are one case, and it errs towards missing a link rather than making a false one.

Related actions

Other actions in the library sharing at least one technique tag with this one.

Record added September 10, 2026. submit a correction.