SEC v. Sai-Hong Ignatius Ou (insider trading, 2024)

Settled

✓ Checked against the primary document on October 3, 2026. The library's summary, tags and figures for this record were compared with the regulator's own document by an AI model (Claude) following written instructions, with sampled and disputed records read a second time. No lawyer has reviewed them. A checked record can still contain errors, and checked does not mean endorsed. See how we check records or report a correction.

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In December 2024 the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Sai-Hong Ignatius Ou, a physician and principal investigator in Nuvalent's cancer drug trials, with trading ahead of the October 28, 2022 announcement of positive results, which he learned of in June 2022. Without admitting or denying, he consented, subject to court approval, to an injunction, a five-year officer and director bar, disgorgement of $1,520,455 with interest and an equal penalty.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

$1.5m

Disgorgement

$1.5m

Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

$3m

Alleged gain

$1.5m

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 matter on December 18, 2024 as release LR-26198, filing in the District of Massachusetts.

The complaint alleges that Ou, as principal investigator at his California university, learned the results would be announced at a conference and traded on that knowledge. The release does not state the amount of the interest.

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. 2024-12-18 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
• SEC Complaint

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.