Dive Brief:
- The Securities and Exchange Commission charged Meyer Global Management and its chief executive officer with defrauding investors in pre-IPO securities in SpaceX, OpenAI and other companies.
- Beginning in December 2021, the private fund investment firm and its CEO, Owen E.H. Meyer, repeatedly misused client assets and lied to investors, the SEC alleged. In at least three instances, MGM channeled client assets to Meyer’s personal expenses, including the cost of an evening at a strip club, the agency alleged in a filing Wednesday.
- “This case is a reminder that fraudsters can exploit the allure of exclusive, high-return pre-IPO access to take advantage of retail investors,” Corey A. Schuster, chief of the Enforcement Division’s Asset Management unit, said in a statement. MGM did not respond to telephone and email requests for comment.
Dive Insight:
Since becoming chair of the SEC in April 2025, Paul Atkins has tried to ease disclosure guidelines and other barriers to IPOs while encouraging more companies to become publicly listed.
“In the last year and a half since I've become chairman, there's been a whole change of attitude,” he said in a CNBC interview on Tuesday. “We’re trying to make IPOs great again.”
During the first half of 2026, the number of IPOs and amounts raised surged amid several unusually large offerings, including by SpaceX, Honeywell Aerospace and Cerebras Systems.
From January through June, there were 208 IPOs compared with 180 during the same period of last year for approximately a 16% increase, the SEC said on Sept. 26.
The offerings raised more than $137 billion compared with more than $27 billion during the first six months of 2025, the agency said, for a surge of 407%.
MGM and Meyer rode investor enthusiasm for pending IPOs, the SEC alleged. From 2019 to 2024, MGM and Meyer raised at least $18.5 million from nearly 100 investors by selling interests in MGM-managed funds that held interest in pre-IPO securities of various companies, the SEC alleged.
MGM and Meyer defrauded investors “by misappropriating investor money held in private funds that defendants controlled, misleading investors into believing that their investments were secure or increasing in value and using fund capital to support Meyer’s lifestyle and sustain his fraudulent business,” the SEC said.
In at least three instances, MGM and Meyer defrauded investors by misusing at least $1.27 million of client capital to pay for Meyer’s lifestyle, personal investments and investments on behalf of other MGM-advised firms, the SEC alleged.
