Back when I was a junior reporter, I watched my then newspaper’s White House correspondent compete head-to-head with her husband, who covered the US president for another publication. They had elaborate rules about not listening to each other’s phone conversations at home, not asking about meetings and not looking at each other’s papers. Surprisingly, it worked.
Other inherent family conflicts are resolved far less happily. In late 2018, the US Securities and Exchange Commission charged consultant Peter Cho with civil insider trading, saying he bought options in Virgin America after overhearing his then fiancée, a UBS banker, as she worked on a deal involving the airline from their shared apartment. He paid $532,777 to settle the allegations.
This is just one in a long line of “pillow talk” cases in which unscrupulous traders have capitalised on information stolen from their partners. One of the most serious saw Michael Devlin, a former Lehman Brothers executive, plead guilty in 2008 to criminal conspiracy to commit insider trading for “misappropriating” information about at least 13 deals handled by his wife, a public relations executive then with Brunswick.