Van Gilder Hires Big Guns - Perkins Coie

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VOL. 10  |  NO. 53  |  $6   | 

DECEMBER 31, 2012

Van Gilder Hires Big Guns By James

Carlson

LAW WEEK COLORADO

DENVER — A former insurance executive facing insider trading charges has retained a new legal team to defend him. Michael Van Gilder is now represented by Bob Miller and Markus Funk, partners in the Denver office of Perkins Coie. Van Gilder, who stepped down as chief executive officer of Van Gilder Insurance Corp. a day after he was indicted in late October, was represented by Denver attorney David Savitz until the Perkins Coie team took over last week. Miller and Funk will represent Van Gilder in both the criminal case brought by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Denver and a civil lawsuit filed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Van Gilder is accused of trading in Denver-based Delta Petroleum’s stock MARKUS FUNK based on tips from the company’s thenchief executive officer, Roger Parker. Parker, a close friend of Van Gilder’s, is also a defendant in the SEC suit. According to the SEC’s complaint and the criminal indictment, the insider trading occurred in advance of Delta Petroleum’s public announcement that Beverly Hills-based private investment firm Tracinda had agreed to purchase a 35 percent stake in the company, which shot its stock value up by nearly 20 percent. The government alleges that Parker illegally tipped Van Gilder and another friend on several occasions in late November

and December 2007 as the Tracinda investment was developing. Based on the inside information, Van Gilder and the other friend loaded up on Delta stock and highly speculative options contracts, and Van Gilder advised his relatives, his broker and a co-worker to do the same. The alleged insider trading generated more than $890,000 in illicit profits, the government alleges, and Van Gilder’s take was about $86,000.  • — James Carlson, [email protected]