Court Opinion

ID: 9455647
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:28:25.453035+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:40.493866
License: Public Domain

ANDERSON, Circuit Judge
(concurring) :
I concur in the affirmance of the order of the District Court, and in Judge Waterman’s discussion of Rule 10b-6. I also concur in the holding that on May 8, 1969, the appellees were neither required nor permitted to disclose more than the fact of Bangor Punta’s commitment to make an exchange offer of its securities to the Piper shareholders as part of an agreement to purchase the holdings of the Piper insiders, since the titles of Bangor Punta securities and the basis or ratio of this exchange were not yet established. For the reasons there expressed, the policies of regulation common to the federal securities laws require this resolution of the conflict between openness and reticence in disclosing specific details which is implicit in the dictates of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and the Securities Act of 1933.
I would not concur, however, in any interpretation of the opinion which might be thought to suggest that disclosure of information relating to the $80 valuation estimate, specified in the insiders’ sale agreement, would not be required under any circumstances because it would fail to satisfy the 1934 Act’s standard of materiality, regardless of whether supervening restrictions of the 1933 Act are applicable. As Chief Judge Lumbard’s dissent notes, the additional fact that Bangor Punta had committed itself to offer securities valued by a well-known investment banking firm at not less than $80 per Piper share, and to back this commitment with a conditional guarantee of the value of the securities already offered to the Piper insiders, might fall within the investor-oriented definition of materiality set out in relation to disclosure required by § 10(b) of the 1934 Act *579and Rule 10b-5 in SEC v. Texas Gulf Sulphur Co., 401 F.2d 833, 849 (2 Cir. 1968), cert. denied sub nom. Coates v: SEC, 394 U.S. 976, 89 S.Ct. 1454, 22 L.Ed.2d 756 (1969). The Court’s holding, in which I concur, is simply that the possible application of disclosure principles discussed in that case is here “outweighed by the danger that substantial numbers of investors were misled by the figure’s publication” in a manner violating Rule 135.
Were it necessary to consider the application of materiality tests to the $80 value term, the fact could not be overlooked that Rule 10b-5 applies to the disclosure of all material “information,” 401 F.2d at 848, a category of data which may include some “matters which do not fall tidily into either the ‘fact’ or ‘opinion’ class.” A. Bromberg, Securities Laws: Fraud — SEC Rule 10b-5, § 7.4 (6) (d), p. 187 (1969). But this case does not turn upon either the validity of the distinction between a material “event” and a mere “prediction or opinion” suggested in SEC Release No. 5009 (Oct. 7, 1969), or upon its application to these facts.