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Tag archive for ‘SEC’

West Marine agrees never again to do the things it doesn’t admit ever doing(0)

westmarinelogoWest Marine, the Watsonville-based boating supply retailer, reported today that the Securities and Exchange Commission approved a final settlement of the federal agency’s investigation into certain of the company’s accounting practices.

The SEC alleged today in a complaint filed in a federal court in San Jose that Read the rest of this entry »

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SEC proposes changes to some proxy disclosure rules(0)

sec-logoThe Securities and Exchange Commission said today it has proposed revisions to some of its rules related to proxy disclosures that the Commission says would include information about:

  • The relationship of a company’s overall compensation policies to risk.
  • The qualifications of directors, executive officers and nominees.
  • Company leadership structure.
  • Potential conflicts of interests of compensation consultants.

The proposals are also intended to Read the rest of this entry »

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Wife must testify in investigation into possible insider trading involving her husband(1)

sec-logo1An employee of Restoration Hardware must appear before the SEC to give sworn testimony in its investigation into possible insider trading involving her husband, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled today.

In May, Lena Yan, Read the rest of this entry »

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SEC says financial analyst improperly claims marital privilege to avoid testimony in insider trading case(1)

sec-logoThe Securities and Exchange Commission said today it has filed an action to force Oakland resident Lena Yan, an analyst in the finance department at Restoration Hardware, to provide sworn testimony in its investigation into possible insider trading involving her husband in Restoration Hardware stock in November 2007 shortly before news of its acquisition became public.

According to a filing the SEC made today, Yan’s husband, Read the rest of this entry »

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Apple finds new way to deny investors ’say on pay’(6)

Sometime in the last year, Apple seems to have changed the way it tallies shareholder votes.

apple-logoAt its annual meeting with investors in February, Apple announced that shareholders had voted down all investor-sponsored proposals, including a widely watched one that urged the company to allow shareholders to vote every year on its executive compensation practices.

The result was something of a surprise, given that a similar say-on-pay proposal had passed the previous year and the say-on-pay movement has been gaining strength ever since.

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SEC charges Blackberry-maker and top execs with backdating options, misleading investors(0)

rimm-lazaridis1Blackberry maker Research-In-Motion and four of its top executives were charged today by the Securities and Exchange Commission with backdating millions of stock option grants over an eight year period from 1998 through 2006. In its complaint, the SEC alleges that RIM’s former Chief Financial Officer Dennis Kavelman, former finance Vice President Angelo Loberto, and Co-Chief Executive Officers James Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis (pictured here with the Blackberry Pearl) illegally granted undisclosed, in-the-money options to RIM executives and employees, and that they “made false and misleading disclosures about how RIM priced and accounted for options, and that the illicit backdating provided the executives and other employees with millions of dollars in undisclosed compensation.”

The executives are specifically accused of Read the rest of this entry »

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Mark Cuban takes off the muzzle and responds to SEC case(1)

Well, that didn’t take long. It only took Mark Cuban one day to break his monastic vow of silence.

On Monday, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed an insider trading case against Cuban. The feds claimed Cuban received confidential information from the CEO of Mamma.com and turned around and dumped his shares, saving $750,000 when the stock dropped the next day.

Perhaps the biggest shock of all came next: Cuban wrote on his blog that he would say nothing beyond issuing a statement about the charges.

Bo-ring!

Fortunately, that self-imposed muzzle came right off Tuesday. Read the rest of this entry »

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How serious are the insider trading charges against Mark Cuban?(0)

Topic A for discussion this morning are the insider trading charges filed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission against former “Dancing With The Stars” also-ran Mark Cuban. Oh, and he’s also the guy who owns the Dallas Mavericks, wants to buy the Chicago Cubs, and has an ego the size of Silicon Valley.

The complaint filed Monday contains the good, old-fashioned kind of allegations. You can read the full complaint here. In essence, the SEC claims that Cuban was an investor in the search engine Mamma.com. Back in 2004, the company briefed him on plans to issue a new round of stock, which would likely dilute shareholder value and cause the stock price to drop. Also, Cuban was ordered not to tell a soul.

According to the SEC, Cuban called his broker and told him to dump his Mamma.com shares. The stock dropped almost 10 percent the next day, and Cuban saved about $750,000. Nice (allegedly).

You can read the full complaint here. But Gawker provides the highlights here.

One of the tastiest morsels from the complaint comes from a conversation between Cuban and the Mamma.com CEO:

“The CEO prefaced the call by informing Cuban that he had confidential information to convey to him, and Cuban agreed that he would keep whatever information the CEO intended to share with him confidential. The CEO, in reliance on Cuban’s agreement to keep the information confidential, proceeded to tell Cuban about the PIPE offering. Cuban became very upset and angry during the conversation, and said, among other things, that he did not like PIPES because they dilute the existing shareholders. At the end of the call, Cuban told the CEO “Well, now I’m screwed. I can’t sell.”

But then, apparently, he did sell. Allegedly.

And what does Mr. Cuban have to say about all of this? Read the rest of this entry »

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Heinen settles with SEC over Apple option backdating complaint(1)

Nancy Heinen (pictured), the former general counsel at Apple has agreed to pay $2.2 million in disgorgement, interest and penalties and be barred from serving as an officer or director of any public company for five years to settle complaints arising from the alleged backdating of Apple options, according to a release put out today by the Securities and Exchange Commission. In doing so, Heinen neither admitted or denied the Commission’s allegations.

According to the complaint, “Heinen caused Apple to fraudulently Read the rest of this entry »

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SEC terminates Selestica investigation: no enforcement action planned(0)

Selectica got some good news sent its way earlier this month from the San Francisco office of the Securities and Exchange Commission, which told the company that an informal investigation it had undertaken into the company’s past stock option granting practices “has been terminated, and Read the rest of this entry »

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