Prior to joining Ropes & Gray (in 2005), Arthur Cutillo (among 14 taken into custody this morning) worked at Merck & Co., Inc.
His experience at Merck ranged from "the supervision of vaccine production to ensuring the release of sterile vaccines to various markets worldwide. . . ." according to a Google-cached Ropes & Gray bio for him.
The Wall Street Journal's Law blog is reporting thus:
. . . .The Ropes & Gray lawyer identified as having been taken into custody is Arthur Cutillo, an associate. According to a cached version of Cutillo’s page (which has already been removed by the firm), Cutillo joined Ropes & Gray in 2005 and practiced in the litigation department. Before working at Ropes, Cutillo worked at Merck & Co. He got his JD in 2005 from Villanova, and got his BS from Rutgers in 1999. . . .
He is also apparently a patent lawyer, having passed the patent bar in 2003 -- which looks to be while he was still at Merck. No word is available, at the moment, on whether he was employed as a lawyer, at any point, while at Merck.
Interesting -- as some of the allegedly insider trades were in public pharma targets, and acquirors. We'll keep you posted on this one, but I wonder whether this might turn out to be in some way connected to the wildly high-volumes in short-dated, out-of-the-money Schering-Plough call options, in the days immediately before the March 9, 2009 announcement of the Merck/Schering-Plough bust-up transaction.
Time will tell.
Again, to be abundantly clear -- as I mentioned the last two times this story came up, including when the SEC first confirmed it was investigating the March 6, 2009 Schering-Plough pre-announcement trading -- there is nothing presently known to suggest that either Merck or Schering-Plough had any hand in leaking, down-stream tipping or the allegedly "inside" trading -- but it is clear that someone out there knew something was imminent. And 34 million shares changed hands at an artificially low price, that Friday, March 6, 2009.
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