Justice Served Up August 2, 2012
Insider Trading That's Legal But Still Distasteful (The Verge) - When Zynga went public last December, investors, individual investors, paid upwards of $10/share for the stock. There was so much excitement about Zynga going public while at the same time Facebook, the most anticipated IPO in years, was on the horizon and being courted by the NYSE and Nasdaq. A few Zynga executives were supposed to have their shares in locked up for a year but had that waived by underwriters, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs (they must have special powers). By April, Zynga was at $12/share and executives started selling and the shares of the company are now trading at $3/share after poor earnings. What did these folks know? Lawyers for shareholders want to to know.
"Avon Calling" to Settle (WSJ) - Word has it that Avon is in discussions to settle with the U.S. Department of Justice that it was involved in a bribery scandal. Investigators have been interviewing executives about payments made to "consultants", which may have just been bribery of officials. Millions of dollars of suspected bribery payments have been uncovered in Avon's operations is Brazil and France. The Justice Department had been trying to figure out how much the executives at the top of Avon knew of the program. Recently, investigators asked to meet with Andrea Jung, former CEO and current Chairman ..... then the talks of settlement....hmmm.
Former UBS Banker Released From Prison (Bloomberg) - Remember Bradley Birkenfeld, the UBS Banker that blew the whistle on the bank and many of its customers that were dodging U.S. Taxes? We he received 40 months in prison for his own role in the operation and is now heading to a halfway house to complete his sentence. He's still looking for millions of dollars as his bounty for the dollars he helped the U.S. recover from his claims.
Insider Trading Trial of Doug Whitman Continues (Bloomberg) - Karl Motey, an expert network consultant, has been cooperating with the government for years and yesterday he took the stand against Doug Whitman of Whitman Capital. Motey told jurors that he got inside information from employees at Marvell (a technology company) and passed it to Whitman. Whitman's lawyers contend that Motey is a liar trying to keep himself out of jail by working with the government. He said, he said case.
