An attorney formerly with a prestigious corporate law firm was accused Thursday of selling inside information about planned takeovers in a multimillion-dollar trading scheme. The lawyer, Steven L. Glauberman, was charged with four counts of conspiracy, securities fraud and wire fraud in a criminal information brought by the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan. Glauberman, 39, of Manhattan, was an associate at the firm, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, where he specialized in mergers and acquisitions. The government alleged he leaked inside information about clients involved in some of the best-known takeovers of the 1980s to a stock broker, who passed it along to others. Glauberman simultaneously settled a civil complaint by the Securities and Exchange Commission, agreeing to pay back $221,000 in his alleged illegal profits. The SEC said he tipped off Eban Smith, a former broker-dealer at the Stamford, Conn., office of Smith Barney & Co., to 29 planned or pending corporate transactions between 1984 and 1989. These included Bristol Meyers' 1985 bid for Genetic Systems, a management leveraged buyout of National Gypsum, also in 1985, Black and Decker's 1988 unsolicited bid for American Standard, Walt Disney Co.'s offer for Gibson Greetings, and K mart's bid for Payless Drugstore Stores Northwest Inc. The SEC said Smith paid Glauberman $50,000 for the information and also traded in a special account for Glauberman's benefit. Glauberman's attorney, Martin Perschetz, said he had no comment on behalf of his client. Smith, 41, of Greenwich, Conn., was charged in a separate criminal indictment with using the information he obtained from Glauberman to buy and sell securities for his own account and to solicit more business for his firm. In addition, two other investors who allegedly were tipped off by Smith were charged criminally with making trades based on the information from Glauberman. They are Peter H. Jeffer, 44, a Manhattan money manager, and Stanley P. Patrick, 43, of Old Lyme, Conn., a former stock trader. Jeffer Management Corp., a New York corporation created by Jeffer that stopped doing business in 1988, was also named in the indictment. Court papers said Smith, Jeffer and Patrick earned a total $3.75 million in illegal profits through the trades. The SEC said Smith's portion of profits was more than $1.1 million. Smith, Jeffer and Patrick also were named in the SEC civil complaint. Jeffer settled, but Smith and Patrick did not, meaning the commission is still trying to recover their alleged profits in the scheme. In addition, Glauberman's sister Lori, an associate director in the preferred stock department of Bear Stearns & Co., was accused by the SEC of trading in the securities of at least 11 of the deals. According to the SEC, without admitting or denying wrongdoing, Glauberman agreed to disgorge $221,098; his sister, Lori, 36, agreed to disgorge $19,135. Jeffer and his company would have been liable to disgorge $1.77 million but the SEC said that penalty was waived based on affidavits that they were unable to pay. A sixth defendant in the SEC complaint, Anthony Correra, 55, of Albuquerque, N.M., a former analyst and portfolio manager, will pay back $496,842.
