(Corrects to remove erroneous brackets in paragraphs 3 and 10)

By Suzanne Barlyn

Nov 24 (Reuters) - A political intelligence firm has agreed to settle charges that it failed to properly alert its compliance officers about potential inside tips received from federal employees in 2010, U.S. regulators said on Tuesday.

New York-based Marwood Group Research, LLC, whose business includes giving hedge funds updates on potential federal regulatory actions, admitted to the wrongdoing and will pay a $375,000 penalty, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said.

"We are pleased that this settlement finally puts this matter behind us," a Marwood spokesman said. The firm fully cooperated in the agency's four-year review and has since taken steps to remediate, the spokesman said.

In 2010, Marwood analysts sought information from federal employees about policy issues and regulatory approvals that were pending at the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the SEC said.

Marwood encouraged analysts to maintain relationships with government employees in order to gather information for "research notes" it sent to clients.

Marwood prohibited employees from acquiring inside information and required them to alert the compliance department if they received anything confidential, the SEC said.

But Marwood's analysts did not present the data to the compliance department. Moreover, the firm wrote research notes for clients, who could have used inside information to make trading decisions, the SEC said.

The problems included a July 2010 conversation between a Marwood analyst and a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) employee. The agency was looking into whether a cancer drug was "reasonable and necessary" for Medicare coverage purposes, a decision that could influence the manufacturer's stock price.

The analyst, in an email to his manager, later wrote that he was concerned about the CMS employee possibly identifying him as the source of the "leaked" information.

"Please keep the sensitivity of this in mind when talking to clients because any leakage of this info will result in my getting locked out of any conversations going forward," the analyst wrote.

The SEC also cited a 73-minute phone call between several Marwood employees and a former high-ranking FDA official. Marwood had hired him as a consultant to help with research about a diabetes drug application that was pending at the FDA.

The consultant, whom the SEC did not identify, told Marwood that he believed that some FDA employees were "concerned about approval."

Some of those details appeared in Marwood's research, the SEC said.

(Reporting by Suzanne Barlyn; Editing by Andrew Hay and Richard Chang)