The New York Times - When executives own big stakes in the companies they run, investors can rest a little more easily at night, knowing those managers have the shareholders’ best interests at heart. Except when maybe they don’t.
As the staggering destruction of wealth in the stock market has recently revealed, executives can sometimes appear to own shares in a company, but have actually pledged them as collateral for a loan. And if there is a sharp drop in the stock’s value, the executive may suddenly be forced to dump those shares, very likely adding to the stock’s downdraft.
And the other shareholders probably never saw it coming.
As it turns out, while corporate insiders must disclose their comings and goings in their companies’ shares, experts say there are no hard and fast rules requiring that the public be told when an executive has put a big block of shares at risk by borrowing against them.
Already this month, there have been about $1 billion in sales by company insiders dumping stock to meet margin calls, as lenders’ demands for the stock sales are known. According to Equilar, an executive compensation research firm in Redwood Shores, Calif., executives at three dozen companies have disclosed such sales since October.
Under Securities and Exchange Commission rules, executives are typically required to disclose insider sales within two days of making them and indicate why they were sold, including as a result of a margin call. But experts say there are no rules requiring that the public be told ahead of time that an executive has pledged stock in a margin loan or how the borrowed money is being used. It might be a loan to buy more shares of the company’s stock — which would indicate a vote of confidence in the shares. Or it might be a loan to buy some other company’s stock or something else altogether — possibly a sign that the executive thinks there are better places to invest. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/20/business/20pay.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
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