While SEC rulemaking priorities may have shifted significantly under the new administration, the SEC and Department of Justice (DOJ) continued to bring insider trading cases during Q3 2025, intensifying efforts in policing fraud in the form of insider trading as one of this administration’s primary focus areas. Cases involved officers, directors, employees, or other insiders, advisers, and their employees, subsidiaries, as well as financial industry professionals, consultants, and gatekeepers with access to and misuse of material non-public information (MNPI) in violation of federal securities laws. Cases further involved or implicated friends, family members, and individual or professional traders who received MNPI through tips from such insiders or through their employment and used such MNPI to trade on their own behalf or in accounts that they owned or managed. We have summarized some of the perpetrators and facts presented by such cases as reminders and instruction for clients.

In Q3 2025, the Second Circuit affirmed the dismissal of insider trading claims against several large banks in the case In re: Archegos 20A Litigation., holding that the banks did not owe a duty to Archegos's family office with prime brokerage relationships with the banks in connection with the liquidation of Archegos's collateral, reaffirming that insider trading requires the breach of a duty and giving credence to the principle that it is possible for market participants may trade on information that is not possessed by the entire market without violating insider trading laws. In contrast, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York denied a defendant’s motion to dismiss the SEC’s 2021 insider trading claim against him, challenging the sufficiency of the SEC’s claims against him and arguing that service on him was insufficient. The court further dismissed the defendant's counterclaim against the SEC.