Dirks v. Securities & Exchange Commission 463 U.S. 646, 77 L. Ed. 2d 911, 103 S. Ct. 3255, 1983 U.S. LEXIS 102, SCDB 1982-152

Justice Powell

delivered the opinion of the Court.

Petitioner Raymond Dirks received material nonpublic information from “insiders” of a corporation with which he had no connection. He disclosed this information to investors who relied on it in trading in the shares of the corporation. The question is whether Dirks violated the antifraud provisions of the federal securities laws by this disclosure.

I

In 1973, Dirks was an officer of a New York broker-dealer firm who specialized in providing investment analysis of insurance company securities to institutional investors.1 On *649March 6, Dirks received information from Ronald Secrist, a former officer of Equity Funding of America. Secrist alleged that the assets of Equity Funding, a diversified corporation primarily engaged in selling life insurance and mutual funds, were vastly overstated as the result of fraudulent corporate practices. Secrist also stated that various regulatory agencies had failed to act on similar charges made by Equity Funding employees. He urged Dirks to verify the fraud and disclose it publicly.

Dirks decided to investigate the allegations. He visited Equity Funding’s headquarters in Los Angeles and interviewed several officers and employees of the corporation. The senior management denied any wrongdoing, but certain corporation employees corroborated the charges of fraud. Neither Dirks nor his firm owned or traded any Equity Funding stock, but throughout his investigation he openly discussed the information he had obtained with a number of clients and investors. Some of these persons sold their holdings of Equity Funding securities, including five investment advisers who liquidated holdings of more than $16 million.2

While Dirks was in Los Angeles, he was in touch regularly with William Blundell, the Wall Street Journal’s Los Angeles bureau chief. Dirks urged Blundell to write a story on the fraud allegations. Blundell did not believe, however, that such a massive fraud could go undetected and declined to *650write the story. He feared that publishing such damaging hearsay might be libelous.

During the 2-week period in which Dirks pursued his investigation and spread word of Secrist’s charges, the price of Equity Funding stock fell from $26 per share to less than $15 per share. This led the New York Stock Exchange to halt trading on March 27. Shortly thereafter California insurance authorities impounded Equity Funding’s records and uncovered evidence of the fraud. Only then did the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) file a complaint against Equity Funding3 and only then, on April 2, did the Wall Street Journal publish a front-page story based largely on information assembled by Dirks. Equity Funding immediately went into receivership.4

The SEC began an investigation into Dirks’ role in the exposure of the fraud. After a hearing by an Administrative Law Judge, the SEC found that Dirks had aided and abetted violations of § 17(a) of the Securities Act of 1933, 48 Stat. 84, as amended, 15 U. S. C. §77q(a),5 § 10(b) of the Securities

*651Exchange Act of 1934, 48 Stat. 891, 15 U. S. C. §78j(b),6 and SEC Rule 10b-5, 17 CFR §240.10b-5 (1983),7 by repeating the allegations of fraud to members of the investment community who later sold their Equity Funding stock. The SEC concluded: “Where ‘tippees’ — regardless of their motivation or occupation — come into possession of material ‘corporate information that they know is confidential and know or should know came from a corporate insider,’ they must either publicly disclose that information or refrain from trading.” 21 S. E. C. Docket 1401, 1407 (1981) (footnote omitted) (quoting Chiarella v. United States, 445 U. S. 222, 230, n. 12 (1980)). Recognizing, however, that Dirks “played an important role in bringing [Equity Funding’s] massive fraud *652to light,” 21 S. E. C. Docket, at 1412,8 the SEC only censured him.9

Dirks sought review in the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The court entered judgment against Dirks “for the reasons stated by the Commission in its opinion.” App. to Pet. for Cert. C-2. Judge Wright, a member of the panel, subsequently issued an opinion. Judge Robb concurred in the result and Judge Tamm dissented; neither filed a separate opinion. Judge Wright believed that “the obligations of corporate fiduciaries pass to all those to whom they disclose their information before it has been disseminated to the public at large.” 220 U. S. App. D. C. 309, 324, 681 F. 2d 824, 839 (1982). Alternatively, Judge Wright concluded that, as an employee of a broker-dealer, Dirks had violated “obligations to the SEC and to the public completely independent of any obligations he acquired” as a result of receiving the information. Id., at 325, 681 F. 2d, at 840.

In view of the importance to the SEC and to the securities industry of the question presented by this case, we granted a writ of certiorari. 459 U. S. 1014 (1982). We now reverse.

*653H-H I — I

In the seminal case of In re Cady, Roberts & Co., 40 S. E. C. 907 (1961), the SEC recognized that the common law in some jurisdictions imposes on “corporate ‘insiders,’ particularly officers, directors, or controlling stockholders” an “affirmative duty of disclosure . . . when dealing in securities.” Id., at 911, and n. 13.10 The SEC found that not only did breach of this common-law duty also establish the elements of a Rule 10b-5 violation,11 but that individuals other than corporate insiders could be obligated either to disclose material nonpublic information12 before trading or to abstain from trading altogether. Id., at 912. In Chiarella, we accepted the two elements set out in Cady, Roberts for establishing a Rule 10b-5 violation: “(i) the existence of a relationship affording access to inside information intended to be available only for a corporate purpose, and (ii) the unfairness of allowing a corporate insider to take advantage of that in*654formation by trading without disclosure.” 445 U. S., at 227. In examining whether Chiarella had an obligation to disclose or abstain, the Court found that there is no general duty to disclose before trading on material nonpublic information,13 and held that “a duty to disclose under § 10(b) does not arise from the mere possession of nonpublic market information.” Id., at 235. Such a duty arises rather from the existence of a fiduciary relationship. See id., at 227-235.

Not “all breaches of fiduciary duty in connection -with a securities transaction,” however, come within the ambit of Rule 10b-5. Santa Fe Industries, Inc. v. Green, 430 U. S. 462, 472 (1977). There must also be “manipulation or deception.” Id., at 473. In an inside-trading case this fraud derives from the “inherent unfairness involved where one takes advantage” of “information intended to be available only for a corporate purpose and not for the personal benefit of anyone.” In re Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith, Inc., 43 S. E. C. 933, 936 (1968). Thus, an insider will be liable under Rule 10b-5 for inside trading only where he fails to disclose material nonpublic information before trading on it and thus makes “secret profits.” Cady, Roberts, supra, at 916, n. 31.

Ill

We were explicit in Chiarella in saying that there can be no duty to disclose where the person who has traded on inside information “was not [the corporation’s] agent, . . . was not a fiduciary, [or] was not a person in whom the sellers [of the securities] had placed their trust and confidence.” 445 U. S., at 232. Not to require such a fiduciary relationship, we recognized, would “depar[t] radically from the established doctrine that duty arises from a specific relationship between *655two parties” and would amount to “recognizing a general duty between all participants in market transactions to forgo actions based on material, nonpublic information.” Id., at 232, 233. This requirement of a specific relationship between the shareholders and the individual trading on inside information has created analytical difficulties for the SEC and courts in policing tippees who trade on inside information. Unlike insiders who have independent fiduciary duties to both the corporation and its shareholders, the typical tippee has no such relationships.14 In view of this absence, it has been unclear how a tippee acquires the Cady, Roberts duty to refrain from trading on inside information.

A

The SEC’s position, as stated in its opinion in this case, is that a tippee “inherits” the Cady, Roberts obligation to shareholders whenever he receives inside information from an insider:

“In tipping potential traders, Dirks breached a duty which he had assumed as a result of knowingly receiving *656confidential information from [Equity Funding] insiders. Tippees such as Dirks who receive non-public, material information from insiders become ‘subject to the same duty as [the] insiders. ’ Shapiro v. Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith, Inc. [495 F. 2d 228, 237 (CA2 1974) (quoting Ross v. Licht, 263 F. Supp. 395, 410 (SDNY 1967))]. Such a tippee breaches the fiduciary duty which he assumes from the insider when the tippee knowingly transmits the information to someone who will probably trade on the basis thereof. . . . Presumably, Dirks’ informants were entitled to disclose the [Equity Funding] fraud in order to bring it to light and its perpetrators to justice. However, Dirks — standing in their shoes — committed a breach of the fiduciary duty which he had assumed in dealing with them, when he passed the information on to traders.” 21 S. E. C. Docket, at 1410, n. 42.

This view differs little from the view that we rejected as inconsistent with congressional intent in Chiarella. In that case, the Court of Appeals agreed with the SEC and affirmed Chiarella’s conviction, holding that “[ajnyone — corporate insider or not — who regularly receives material nonpublic information may not use that information to trade in securities without incurring an affirmative duty to disclose.” United States v. Chiarella, 588 F. 2d 1358, 1365 (CA2 1978) (emphasis in original). Here, the SEC maintains that anyone who knowingly receives nonpublic material information from an insider has a fiduciary duty to disclose before trading.15

*657In effect, the SEC’s theory of tippee liability in both cases appears rooted in the idea that the antifraud provisions require equal information among all traders. This conflicts with the principle set forth in Chiarella that only some persons, under some circumstances, will be barred from trading while in possession of material nonpublic information.16 Judge Wright correctly read our opinion in Chiarella as repudiating any notion that all traders must enjoy equal information before trading: “[T]he ‘information’ theory is rejected. Because the disclose-or-refrain duty is extraordinary, it attaches only when a party has legal obligations other than a mere duty to comply with the general antifraud proscriptions in the federal securities laws.” 220 U. S. App. D. C., at 322, 681 F. 2d, at 837. See Chiarella, 445 U. S., at 235, n. 20. We reaffirm today that “[a] duty [to disclose] *658arises from the relationship between parties . . . and not merely from one’s ability to acquire information because of his position in the market.” Id., at 231-232, n. 14.

Imposing a duty to disclose or abstain solely because a person knowingly receives material nonpublic information from an insider and trades on it could have an inhibiting influence on the role of market analysts, which the SEC itself recognizes is necessary to the preservation of a healthy market.17 It is commonplace for analysts to “ferret out and analyze information,” 21 S. E. C. Docket, at 1406,18 and this often is done by meeting with and questioning corporate officers and others who are insiders. And information that the analysts *659obtain normally may be the basis for judgments as to the market worth of a corporation’s securities. The analyst’s judgment in this respect is made available in market letters or otherwise to clients of the firm. It is the nature of this type of information, and indeed of the markets themselves, that such information cannot be made simultaneously available to all of the corporation’s stockholders or the public generally.

B

The conclusion that recipients of inside information do not invariably acquire a duty to disclose or abstain does not mean that such tippees always are free to trade on the information. The need for a ban on some tippee trading is clear. Not only are insiders forbidden by their fiduciary relationship from personally using undisclosed corporate information to their advantage, but they also may not give such information to an outsider for the same improper purpose of exploiting the information for their personal gain. See 15 U. S. C. § 78t(b) (making it unlawful to do indirectly “by means of any other person” any act made unlawful by the federal securities laws). Similarly, the transactions of those who knowingly participate with the fiduciary in such a breach are “as forbidden” as transactions “on behalf of the trustee himself.” Mosser v. Darrow, 341 U. S. 267, 272 (1951). See Jackson v. Smith, 254 U. S. 586, 589 (1921); Jackson v. Ludeling, 21 Wall. 616, 631-632 (1874). As the Court explained in Mosser, a contrary rule “would open up opportunities for devious dealings in the name of others that the trustee could not conduct in his own.” 341 U. S., at 271. See SEC v. Texas Gulf Sulphur Co., 446 F. 2d 1301, 1308 (CA2), cert. denied, 404 U. S. 1005 (1971). Thus, the tippee’s duty to disclose or abstain is derivative from that of the insider’s duty. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 38. Cf. Chiarella, 445 U. S., at 246, n. 1 (Blackmun, J., dissenting). As we noted in Chiarella, “[t]he tippee’s obligation has been viewed as arising from his role as a participant after the fact in the insider’s breach of a fiduciary duty.” Id., at 230, n. 12.

*660Thus, some tippees must assume an insider’s duty to the shareholders not because they receive inside information, but rather because it has been made available to them improperly.19 And for Rule 10b-5 purposes, the insider’s disclosure is improper only where it would violate his Cady, Roberts duty. Thus, a tippee assumes a fiduciary duty to the shareholders of a corporation not to trade on material nonpublic information only when the insider has breached his fiduciary duty to the shareholders by disclosing the information to the tippee and the tippee knows or should know that there has been a breach.20 As Commissioner Smith perceptively ob*661served in In re Investors Management Co., 44 S. E. C. 633 (1971): “[TJippee responsibility must be related back to insider responsibility by a necessary finding that the tippee knew the information was given to him in breach of a duty by a person having a special relationship to the issuer not to disclose the information . . . Id., at 651 (concurring in result). Tipping thus properly is viewed only as a means of indirectly violating the Cady, Roberts disclose-or-abstain rule.21

C

In determining whether a tippee is under an obligation to disclose or abstain, it thus is necessary to determine whether the insider’s “tip” constituted a breach of the insider’s fiduciary duty. All disclosures of confidential corporate informa*662tion are not inconsistent with the duty insiders owe to shareholders. In contrast to the extraordinary facts of this case, the more typical situation in which there will be a question whether disclosure violates the insider’s Cady, Roberts duty is when insiders disclose information to analysts. See n. 16, supra. In some situations, the insider will act consistently with his fiduciary duty to shareholders, and yet release of the information may affect the market. For example, it may not be clear — either to the corporate insider or to the recipient analyst — whether the information will be viewed as material nonpublic information. Corporate officials may mistakenly think the information already has been disclosed or that it is not material enough to affect the market. Whether disclosure is a breach of duty therefore depends in large part on the purpose of the disclosure. This standard was identified by the SEC itself in Cady, Roberts: a purpose of the securities laws was to eliminate “use of inside information for personal advantage.” 40 S. E. C., at 912, n. 15. See n. 10, supra. Thus, the test is whether the insider personally will benefit, directly or indirectly, from his disclosure. Absent some personal gain, there has been no breach of duty to stockholders. And absent a breach by the insider, there is no derivative breach.22 As Commissioner Smith stated in Investors Management Co.: “It is important in this type of *663case to focus on policing insiders and what they do . . . rather than on policing information per se and its possession. . . 44 S. E. C., at 648 (concurring in result).

The SEC argues that, if inside-trading liability does not exist when the information is transmitted for a proper purpose but is used for trading, it would be a rare situation when the parties could not fabricate some ostensibly legitimate business justification for transmitting the information. We think the SEC is unduly concerned. In determining whether the insider’s purpose in making a particular disclosure is fraudulent, the SEC and the courts are not required to read the parties’ minds. Scienter in some cases is relevant in determining whether the tipper has violated his Cady, Roberts duty.23 But to determine whether the disclosure itself “deceive[s], manipulate^], or defraud[s]” shareholders, Aaron v. SEC, 446 U. S. 680, 686 (1980), the initial inquiry is whether there has been a breach of duty by the insider. This requires courts to focus on objective criteria, i. e., whether the insider receives a direct or indirect personal benefit from the disclosure, such as a pecuniary gain or a reputational benefit that will translate into future earnings. Cf. 40 S. E. C., at 912, n. 15; Brudney, Insiders, Outsiders, and Informational Advantages Under the Federal Securities *664Laws, 93 Harv. L. Rev. 322, 348 (1979) (“The theory ... is that the insider, by giving the information out selectively, is in effect selling the information to its recipient for cash, reciprocal information, or other things of value for himself . . .”)• There are objective facts and circumstances that often justify such an inference. For example, there may be a relationship between the insider and the recipient that suggests a quid pro quo from the latter, or an intention to benefit the particular recipient. The elements of fiduciary duty and exploitation of nonpublic information also exist when an insider makes a gift of confidential information to a trading relative or friend. The tip and trade resemble trading by the insider himself followed by a gift of the profits to the recipient.

Determining whether an insider personally benefits from a particular disclosure, a question of fact, will not always be easy for courts. But it is essential, we think, to have a guiding principle for those whose daily activities must be limited and instructed by the SEC’s inside-trading rules, and we believe that there must be a breach of the insider’s fiduciary duty before the tippee inherits the duty to disclose or abstain. In contrast, the rule adopted by the SEC in this case would have no limiting principle.24

*665h-H

Under the inside-trading and tipping rules set forth above, we find that there was no actionable violation by Dirks.25 It is undisputed that Dirks himself was a stranger to Equity Funding, with no pre-existing fiduciary duty to its shareholders.26 He took no action, directly or indirectly, that induced the shareholders or officers of Equity Funding to repose trust or confidence in him. There was no expectation by Dirks’ sources that he would keep their information in confidence. Nor did Dirks misappropriate or illegally obtain the information about Equity Funding. Unless the insiders breached their Cady, Roberts duty to shareholders in disclosing the nonpublic information to Dirks, he breached no duty when he passed it on to investors as well as to the Wall Street Journal.

*666It is clear that neither Secrist nor the other Equity Funding employees violated their Cady, Roberts duty to the corporation’s shareholders by providing information to Dirks.27 *667The tippers received no monetary or personal benefit for revealing Equity Funding’s secrets, nor was their purpose to make a gift of valuable information to Dirks. As the facts of this case clearly indicate, the tippers were motivated by a desire to expose the fraud. See supra, at 648-649. In the absence of a breach of duty to shareholders by the insiders, there was no derivative breach by Dirks. See n. 20, supra. Dirks therefore could not have been “a participant after the fact in [an] insider’s breach of a fiduciary duty.” Chiarella, 445 U. S., at 230, n. 12.

V

We conclude that Dirks, in the circumstances of this case, had no duty to abstain from use of the inside information that he obtained. The judgment of the Court of Appeals therefore is

Reversed.

Justice Blackmun,

with whom Justice Brennan and Justice Marshall join, dissenting.

The Court today takes still another step to limit the protections provided investors by § 10(b) of the Securities Ex*668change Act of 1934.1 See Chiarella v. United States, 445 U. S. 222, 246 (1980) (dissenting opinion). The device employed in this case engrafts a special motivational requirement on the fiduciary duty doctrine. This innovation excuses a knowing and intentional violation of an insider’s duty to shareholders if the insider does not act from a motive of personal gain. Even on the extraordinary facts of this case, such an innovation is not justified.

As the Court recognizes, ante, at 658, n. 18, the facts here are unusual. After a meeting with Ronald Secrist, a former Equity Funding employee, on March 7, 1973, App. 226, petitioner Raymond Dirks found himself in possession of material nonpublic information of massive fraud within the company.2 In the Court’s words, “[h]e uncovered . . . startling information that required no analysis or exercise of judgment as to *669its market relevance.” Ibid. In disclosing that information to Dirks, Secrist intended that Dirks would disseminate the information to his clients, those clients would unload their Equity Funding securities on the market, and the price would fall precipitously, thereby triggering a reaction from the authorities. App. 16, 25, 27.

Dirks complied with his informant’s wishes. Instead of reporting that information to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC or Commission) or to other regulatory agencies, Dirks began to disseminate the information to his clients and undertook his own investigation.3 One of his first steps was to direct his associates at Delafield Childs to draw up a list of Delafield clients holding Equity Funding securities. On March 12, eight days before Dirks flew to Los Angeles to investigate Secrist’s story, he reported the full allegations to Boston Company Institutional Investors, Inc., which on March 15 and 16 sold approximately $1.2 million of Equity securities.4 See id., at 199. As he gathered more *670information, he selectively disclosed it to his clients. To those holding Equity Funding securities he gave the “hard” story — all the allegations; others received the “soft” story — a recitation of vague factors that might reflect adversely on Equity Funding’s management. See id., at 211, n. 24.

Dirks’ attempts to disseminate the information to non-clients were feeble, at best. On March 12, he left a message for Herbert Lawson, the San Francisco bureau chief of The Wall Street Journal. Not until March 19 and 20 did he call Lawson again, and outline the situation. William Blundell, a Journal investigative reporter based in Los Angeles, got in touch with Dirks about his March 20 telephone call. On March 21, Dirks met with Blundell in Los Angeles. Blun-dell began his own investigation, relying in part on Dirks’ contacts, and on March 23 telephoned Stanley Sporkin, the SEC’s Deputy Director of Enforcement. On March 26, the next business day, Sporkin and his staff interviewed Blundell and asked to see Dirks the following morning. Trading was halted by the New York Stock Exchange at about the same time Dirks was talking to Los Angeles SEC personnel. The next day, March 28, the SEC suspended trading in Equity Funding securities. By that time, Dirks’ clients had unloaded close to $15 million of Equity Funding stock and the price had plummeted from $26 to $15. The effect of Dirks’ selective dissemination of Secrist’s information was that Dirks’ clients were able to shift the losses that were inevitable due to the Equity Funding fraud from themselves to uninformed market participants.

I — I 1 — 1

A

No one questions that Secrist himself could not trade on his inside information to the disadvantage of uninformed shareholders and purchasers of Equity Funding securities. See Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 19, n. 12. Unlike the printer in Chiarella, Secrist stood in a fiduciary relation*671ship with these shareholders. As the Court states, ante, at 653, corporate insiders have an affirmative duty of disclosure when trading with shareholders of the corporation. See Chiarella, 445 U. S., at 227. This duty extends as well to purchasers of the corporation’s securities. Id., at 227, n. 8, citing Gratz v. Claughton, 187 F. 2d 46, 49 (CA2), cert. denied, 341 U. S. 920 (1951).

The Court also acknowledges that Secrist could not do by proxy what he was prohibited from doing personally. Ante, at 659; Mosser v. Darrow, 341 U. S. 267, 272 (1951). But this is precisely what Secrist did. Secrist used Dirks to disseminate information to Dirks’ clients, who in turn dumped stock on unknowing purchasers. Secrist thus intended Dirks to injure the purchasers of Equity Funding securities to whom Secrist had a duty to disclose. Accepting the Court’s view of tippee liability,5 it appears that Dirks’ knowledge of this breach makes him liable as a participant in the breach after the fact. Ante, at 659, 667; Chiarella, 445 U. S., at 230, n. 12.

B

The Court holds, however, that Dirks is not liable because Secrist did not violate his duty; according to the Court, this is so because Secrist did not have the improper purpose of personal gain. Ante, at 662-663,666-667. In so doing, the Court imposes a new, subjective limitation on the scope of the duty owed by insiders to shareholders. The novelty of this limitation is reflected in the Court’s lack of support for it.6

*672The insider’s duty is owed directly to the corporation’s shareholders.7 See Langevoort, Insider Trading and the Fiduciary Principle: A Post -Chiarella Restatement, 70 Calif. L. Rev. 1, 5 (1982); 3A W. Fletcher, Cyclopedia of the Law of Private Corporations §1168.2, pp. 288-289 (rev. ed. 1975). As Chiarella recognized, it is based on the relationship of trust and confidence between the insider and the shareholder. 445 U. S., at 228. That relationship assures the shareholder that the insider may not take actions that will harm him unfairly.8 The affirmative duty of disclosure pro*673tects against this injury. See Pepper v. Litton, 308 U. S. 295, 307, n. 15 (1939); Strong v. Repide, 213 U. S. 419, 431-434 (1909); see also Chiarella, 445 U. S., at 228, n. 10; cf. Pepper, 308 U. S., at 307 (fiduciary obligation to corporation exists for corporation’s protection).

C

The fact that the insider himself does not benefit from the breach does not eradicate the shareholder’s injury.9 Cf. Restatement (Second) of Trusts § 205, Comments c and d (1959) (trustee liable for acts causing diminution of value of trust); 3 *674A. Scott, Law of Trusts § 205, p. 1665 (3d ed. 1967) (trustee liable for any losses to trust caused by his breach). It makes no difference to the shareholder whether the corporate insider gained or intended to gain personally from the transaction; the shareholder still has lost because of the insider’s misuse of nonpublic information. The duty is addressed not to the insider’s motives,10 but to his actions and their consequences on the shareholder. Personal gain is not an element of the breach of this duty.11

*675This conclusion is borne out by the Court’s decision in Mosser v. Darrow, 341 U. S. 267 (1951). There, the Court faced an analogous situation: a reorganization trustee engaged two employee-promoters of subsidiaries of the companies being reorganized to provide services that the trustee considered to be essential to the successful operation of the trust. In order to secure their services, the trustee expressly agreed with the employees that they could continue to trade in the securities of the subsidiaries. The employees then turned their inside position into substantial profits at the expense both of the trust and of other holders of the companies’ securities.

The Court acknowledged that the trustee neither intended to nor did in actual fact benefit from this arrangement; his motives were completely selfless and devoted to the companies. Id., at 275. The Court, nevertheless, found the trustee liable to the estate for the activities of the employees he authorized.12 The Court described the trustee’s defalcation as “a willful and deliberate setting up of an interest in employees adverse to that of the trust.” Id., at 272. The breach did not depend on the trustee’s personal gain, and his motives in violating his duty were irrelevant; like Secrist, the trustee intended that others would abuse the inside information for their personal gain. Cf. Dodge v. Ford Motor Co., 204 Mich. 459, 506-509, 170 N. W. 668, 684-685 (1919) (Henry Ford’s philanthropic motives did not permit him to *676set Ford Motor Company dividend policies to benefit public at expense of shareholders).

As Mosser demonstrates, the breach consists in taking action disadvantageous to the person to whom one owes a duty. In this case, Secrist owed a duty to purchasers of Equity Funding shares. The Court’s addition of the bad-purpose element to a breach-of-fiduciary-duty claim is flatly inconsistent with the principle of Mosser. I do not join this limitation of the scope of an insider’s fiduciary duty to shareholders.13

HH HH

The improper-purpose requirement not only has no basis in law, but it also rests implicitly on a policy that I cannot accept. The Court justifies Seerist’s and Dirks’ action because the general benefit derived from the violation of Secrist’s duty to shareholders outweighed the harm caused to those *677shareholders, see Heller, Chiarella, SEC Rule 14e-3 and Dirks: “Fairness” versus Economic Theory, 37 Bus. Lawyer 517, 550 (1982); Easterbrook, Insider Trading, Secret Agents, Evidentiary Privileges, and the Production of Information, 1981 S. Ct. Rev. 309, 338 — in other words, because the end justified the means. Under this view, the benefit conferred on society by Secrist’s and Dirks’ activities may be paid for with the losses caused to shareholders trading with Dirks’ clients.14

Although Secrist’s general motive to expose the Equity Funding fraud was laudable, the means he chose were not. Moreover, even assuming that Dirks played a substantial role in exposing the fraud,15 he and his clients should not profit from the information they obtained from Secrist. Misprision of a felony long has been against public policy. Branzburg v. Hayes, 408 U. S. 665, 696-697 (1972); see 18 U. S. C. §4. A person cannot condition his transmission of information of a crime on a financial award. As a citizen, Dirks had at least an ethical obligation to report the information to the proper authorities. See ante, at 661, n. 21. The Court’s holding is deficient in policy terms not because it fails to create a legal *678norm out of that ethical norm, see ibid., but because it actually rewards Dirks for his aiding and abetting.

Dirks and Secrist were under a duty to disclose the information or to refrain from trading on it.16 I agree that disclosure in this case would have been difficult. Ibid. I also recognize that the SEC seemingly has been less than helpful in its view of the nature of disclosure necessary to satisfy the disclose-or-refrain duty. The Commission tells persons with inside information that they cannot trade on that information unless they disclose; it refuses, however, to tell them how to disclose.17 See In re Faberge, Inc., 45 S. E. C. 249, 256 (1973) (disclosure requires public release through public media designed to reach investing public generally). This seems to be a less than sensible policy, which it is incumbent on the Commission to correct. The Court, however, has no authority to remedy the problem by opening a hole in the congressionally mandated prohibition on insider trading, thus rewarding such trading.

H <

In my view, Secrist violated his duty to Equity Funding shareholders by transmitting material nonpublic information *679to Dirks with the intention that Dirks would cause his clients to trade on that information. Dirks, therefore, was under a duty to make the information publicly available or to refrain from actions that he knew would lead to trading. Because Dirks caused his clients to trade, he violated § 10(b) and Rule 10b-5. Any other result is a disservice to this country’s attempt to provide fair and efficient capital markets. I dissent.