Simon Hannes

Simon Hannes

Simon Gautier Hannes (born c.1960) was an Australian senior executive of Macquarie Bank convicted of insider trading over call options bought prior to the takeover of TNT (to whom Macquarie was an advisor) by the Dutch postal service (KPN) in 1996.

The options were bought in the name of Mark Booth and cost about $90,000. After the takeover bid they were worth over $2 million. Hannes vehemently denied he was this Booth, or that he had inside information anyway. The prosecution had good indirect evidence of both, which the jury accepted at an initial trial and again at a retrial ordered on appeal.

Hannes was also convicted of offences under the Financial Transaction Reports Act 1988 (FTR) relating to the way he had split cash transactions at multiple bank branches to stay under the AUSTRAC reporting threshold of $10,000.

Hannes sentence at the trial in 1999 was 2 years and 2 months imprisonment and $110,000 fines. He served 15½ months of an 18 month non-parole period before granted the retrial. At the retrial in 2002 the sentence was 2 years 6 months and $100,000 fines, with a non-parole period of 20 months, making a further 4½ months to serve.