Andrew Rankin
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Andrew Rankin is a former Canadian investment banker. He is best known for being at the centre of a 7-year OSC investigation from 2001 to 2008.
He attended Upper Canada College, as part of Scadding House. While a popular athletic kid, he befriended fellow student and misfit Daniel Duic. After graduating, Rankin headed to finance. Duic started his own computer business, and also battled an addiction to cocaine.
By late 1997, Rankin had joined RBC Dominion Securities' mergers and acquisitions department--dealmaking central. One of the firm's rising stars, he rose to become managing director in the mergers and acquisitions department in 1999, earning $1.1-million CAD a year and settling in the Forest Hill neighborhood.
The OSC alleged that Rankin soon began quietly passing tips on to Duic about pending takeovers. From 1999 to 2001, Duic pocketed $4.5 million by trading on these tips. In return, Duic supposedly showered Rankin with cash and took him on several exotic trips, paying as much as $2,000 a night in hotel bills. In February, 2001, Duic attracted the OSC's attention by aggressively acquiring shares of thinly traded Irwin Toy Ltd. Rankin was dismissed from RBC on June 2001.
Duic was charged with 10 counts of insider trading. He reached a tentative settlement with the securities commission's enforcement staff in 2004, by agreeing to testify against Rankin. Duic was fined $1.9 million and given a lifetime ban from trading securities. During the trial, Duic testified he made more than $7 million from stock trades, including $4.5 million through tips from Rankin.
Greenspan's defense rested on Duic's cocaine addiction and the deal with the OSC allowing him to keep profits from the insider trades, painting Duic as an unreliable witness. Greenspan also maintained that Duic took advantage of Rankin when the latter was on painkillers, suggesting that Duic had the keys to Rankin's Forest Hill home to get access to Rankin's company laptop.
On July 15, 2005, Rankin was found guilty of 10 counts of giving illegal stock tips to a friend, but not guilty on 10 charges of insider trading. He was initially sentenced to six months in prison, but his lawyer Brian Greenspan successful appealed the charges, later getting the case thrown out.
While Rankin, 41, has been unemployed since then, he has since married his finance Eve and relocated to California. Duic, 43, has remained busy with his software company, MPX Data Systems Inc.
In 2008, he reached a settlement with the Ontario Securities Commission just before a second criminal trial was to take place on 10 counts of illegal tipping. Rankin agreed to admit he engaged in illegal tipping and accepted a lifetime ban from working in the securities industry or serving as a director or officer of a public company. He also accepted a 10-year ban on trading securities in Ontario and agreed to pay $250,000 to pay for the cost of the investigation. In exchange, the OSC agreed to drop the charges.
Shortly after settling with the OSC, Rankin launched an $11 million lawsuit against RBC Dominion Securities.
The OSC case was roundly criticized as a "colossal OSC failure--not a failure to get their man, but disastrous abuse of regulatory power to get the wrong man. Rankin and his family paid millions to defend themselves while the man who made the money, Dan Duic, got off. As the judge who heard the case put it, 'The optics on the deal with Duic are terrible. This man pockets $4.5-million in illegal gains, and he gets to keep most of it and walk the streets a free man.'"
