Prison Sentence for PR Adviser's Insider Trading

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A former corporate PR executive has been sentenced to 15 months of periodic detention, after being convicted for insider trading in shares of a company she advised. Between July 2003 and December 2004, Margot McKay, the founder of Margot McKay and Associates, provided PR consultancy advice to the gambling machine company Aristocrat Leisure. After proofreading the company's annual report, McKay urged her son and mother to buy $A148,000 in Aristocrat shares, in August and October 2004. The shares were later sold for a profit of approximately $A70,000. "The offences were committed deliberately and in circumstances where the offender must have known that she was acting contrary to the law," said NSW Supreme Court Justice Anthony Whealy. He also made an order against McKay for the amount of $A77,428.37, under the Proceeds of Crime Act of 2002.