U.S. SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

Litigation Release No. 19914 / November 15, 2006

SEC v. Min T. Ma and Joyce Manni Ng, Case No. C-04-05295-JSW (N.D. Cal.)

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced that the United States District Court for the Northern District of California entered final judgments, by consent, against Min T. Ma and Joyce Manni Ng in settlement of an insider trading case previously filed by the Commission.

The final judgment against Ma, entered on September 27, 2006, permanently enjoins Ma from violating Section 10(b) of the Exchange Act and Rule 10b-5 thereunder, and orders him to pay disgorgement of $97,067 in illegal trading profits plus prejudgment interest. Payment of an additional $215,016 in trading profits and imposition of a civil penalty were waived based on Ma's sworn representations about his financial condition.

The final judgment against Ng, entered on July 29, 2005, permanently enjoins Ng from violating Section 10(b) of the Exchange Act and Rule 10b-5 thereunder, and orders her to pay disgorgement of $135,506 in illegal trading profits plus prejudgment interest and a civil penalty of $20,000. The determination not to impose a greater penalty was based on Ng's sworn representations about her financial condition.

The Commission filed its action against Ma and Ng on December 14, 2004, alleging that they engaged in insider trading by purchasing stock in advance of mergers they learned about while working as onsite desktop publishers for Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Inc. From May through November 2003, Ma and Ng invested several times their annual income in the targets of mergers they had learned about through their work on confidential deal documents and access to Merrill Lynch computer files. Shortly thereafter, when the mergers were publicly announced and the stock prices rose, Ma and Ng liquidated their shares to gain illegal profits totaling approximately $438,000.

Ma and Ng consented to entry of the respective final judgments against them without admitting or denying the allegations in the complaint.

For more information, see Litigation Release No. 18998 (December 14, 2004).