Peter C. Chang, the founder and chairman of the board at Alliance Fiber Optic Products (AFOP), was charged with insider trading by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in the sale of AFOP to Corning in 2016 for $305 million. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California is also bringing criminal charges against Chang.
The SEC charges that Chang generated more than $2 million in illicit profits and losses avoided by trading on nonpublic information and tipping his brother ahead of two negative earnings announcements and the company’s merger.
AFOP, which was based in Sunnyvale, California designed and manufactured high-performance passive optical components used by cloud data-center operators and leading datacom and telecom OEMs. Prior to the acquisition, Corning used AFOP products in a number of its existing connectivity solutions. AFOP was founded in 1995 and has manufacturing and product development capabilities in the U.S., Taiwan and China.
