SEC v. Andreas Bechtolsheim (insider trading, 2024)

Judgment entered

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In June 2024 the Securities and Exchange Commission announced a consent judgment against Andreas Bechtolsheim, then Arista Networks' chair, for trading Acacia options in the accounts of a relative and an associate on July 8, 2019, a day before Cisco announced it would buy Acacia, generating alleged profits of $415,726. Without admitting or denying, he accepted an injunction, a five-year officer and director bar and a $923,740 penalty.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

$924k

Disgorgement

—

Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

$924k

Alleged gain

$416k

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 Securities and Exchange Commission announced this judgment on June 3, 2024 as release LR-26014, in a Northern District of California case filed March 26, 2024; the court entered judgment on May 30, 2024.

The complaint alleges that Bechtolsheim learned of the pending acquisition through Arista's relationship with another technology company that was also weighing a bid for Acacia, and traded in the two accounts immediately afterwards.

For the regulator's own account of the facts, read the primary document linked above. This page deliberately summarises the structured record rather than reproducing the release.

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. 2024-06-03 Litigation release published

Primary documents

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

• SEC litigation release

The linked release is a work of the United States government and is not subject to copyright. Our summary and narrative above are our own writing.

Related actions

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

Record added September 10, 2026. submit a correction.