BP exec’s husband guilty of insider trading, snooped on her calls

The husband of a former BP merger and acquisitions manager pleaded guilty to securities fraud related to insider trading by eavesdropping on his wife’s work calls while she was handling a potential acquisition of TravelCenters of America, a fuel and truck stop operator.

Tyler Loudon, a Houston resident, earned $1.76 million with the illicit trades based on nonpublic knowledge of the possible acquisition at his wife’s company, according to U.S. Attorney Alamdar Hamdani in the Southern District of Texas. Loudon, due to be sentenced May 17, faces a maximum possible sentence of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. As part of his plea, he agreed to forfeit the $1.76 million of illegal profits.

Separately, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil complaint against Loudon related to the same conduct, which he did not contest.

“Mr. Loudon made a terrible mistake in judgment for which he has taken full responsibility,” Loudon’s lawyer, Peter Zeidenberg, told CNBC.

Authorities said that Loudon in 2022 learned of BP’s confidential plans to acquire TravelCenters in 2022 while working remotely in earshot of his wife, as many couples were due to pandemic-era work-from-home policies.

In December 2022, Loudon secretly listened to his wife’s private work calls discussing BP’s acquisition of TravelCenters while they were working remotely in a small Airbnb during a trip to Rome, according to the SEC’s civil complaint filed in Houston federal court.

After Rome, the couple continued to remotely work “in close quarters,” according to the SEC, noting that their home offices were within “20 feet of each other.”

The SEC said that Loudon’s wife acknowledged occasionally discussing the acquisition with her husband in “normal” married-couple types of conversations.

But over the next few months, Loudon, without telling his…