April trial for ex-E&Y partner - U.S. judge

NEW YORK, Nov 10 (Reuters) - A former partner at accounting firm Ernst & Young LLP [ERNY.UL] will go on trial in April on charges of insider trading, a U.S. judge ordered on Monday.

James Gansman, who worked at E&Y in New York until October 2007, was accused of tipping off a friend about pending deals involving the firm's clients, including the $17.6 billion buyout of Freescale Semiconductor led by the Blackstone Group (BX.N) private equity firm.

The friend, Donna Murdoch of Malvern, Pennsylvania, who worked as an investment banker at an unidentified firm in Philadelphia, will be tried on the same 11 counts of securities fraud and one count of conspiracy.

Gansman and Murdoch, who were indicted in May, have pleaded not guilty and their attorneys say they did not engage in insider trading.

Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum in U.S. District Court in Manhattan scheduled a trial date of April 13 with the agreement of both defendants and the prosecutor. The trial was expected to last up to two weeks.

The defendants, who appeared in court at a conference with the judge, are free on bail.

The indictment said Gansman regularly leaked inside information to Murdoch about pending deals involving E&Y clients that had not yet been made public. It said Murdoch used the tips to generate more than $390,000 in trading profits.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission also filed civil charges against Gansman and Murdoch, as well as Murdoch's father, who it said also traded on the tips and made illegal profits of about $63,000.

The SEC said that two other people, whom it did not identify, allegedly traded for profits of more than $140,000, bringing the total illicit profits to nearly $600,000.

Authorities said the illegal trading took pace between May 2006 and December 2007 and involved about seven publicly traded companies.

If convicted of the criminal charges, Gansman and Murdoch would face as much as 20 years in prison and a $5 million fine for each count of securities fraud and five years in prison and a $250,000 fine for conspiracy. (Reporting by Grant McCool; Editing by Brian Moss)