By Nate Raymond
(Reuters) - A former board member at Nashville-based bank Pinnacle Financial Partners Inc has been charged with insider trading based on confidential information he learned about an impending merger, U.S. securities regulators said on Friday.
James Cope, a Tennessee lawyer who resigned from Pinnacle's board in April, was accused by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission of making more than $56,000 by trading ahead of the bank's January announcement that it would acquire Avenue Financial Holdings Inc.
The SEC said the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Tennessee was filing a parallel criminal case against Cope. Charging papers were not immediately available, and a spokesman for the office had no comment.
Ivan Knauer, Cope's lawyer, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
According to the SEC, Cope, 67, had been a board member of Pinnacle since 2006 and is a partner in the Murfreesboro, Tennessee law firm of Cope, Hudson, Reed & McCreary, PLLC.
The SEC said Cope learned details about the planned deal during an executive committee meeting on Jan. 5 and proceeded to place his first order for Avenue Financial's stock while the meeting was still going.
Cope went on to place four more orders within an hour of the meeting ending, the SEC said.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in New York; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)