The Matthew Devlin story of insider trading is the stuff of movies. The protagonists are glamorous bankers and a PR executive at the centre of big Wall Street deals. There's even a former Playboy model. In the current spate of capitalist dramas, this is merely a piquant sub-plot.
It's a tale of conspiracy, betrayal (furtive laptop-mining whilst a spouse sleeps), criminal investigations. There'll be court room scenes. The Miss August not only desires candlelit dinners but is turned off by dishonest people. What's to say about all this?
Firstly, it was relatively small-beer crime. Some of the profits consisted of little more than a Cartier watch, a widescreen TV, and tuition at a Porsche driving school. The sums involved only made seven digits. It was hardly Bernard Madoff in scale. SEC missed Madoff, but spotted the irregularities surrounding the deals Matthew Devlin exploited. Almost makes you wish they'd had their eye on the bigger stuff (SEC, not Devlin).
My sympathy goes to the betrayed wife and the embarrassed Brunswick. It's hard to shake a cruel nick-name and her husband dubbed her "The Golden Goose", which was presumably meant to be mean on a couple of levels. It worked. Both The Golden Goose and Brunswick are now condemned to be case studies in employee induction and PR training sessions until the end of time. Or until the news cycle washes up an even juicier case.
I doubt anyone would ever have made much on insider deals they gleaned by poking about in my laptop or notebook. Still, there won't be many of us who haven't sometimes been as careless or stupid with our clients' secrets as The Golden Goose seems to have been. TBFTGOG.
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