Sunday, April 25, 2010

Five Goldman senior execs sold shares as SEC probed firm


WSJ:


Five senior executives of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., including the firm's co-general counsel, sold $65.4 million worth of stock after the firm received notice of possible fraud charges, which later drove its stock down 13%.

Sales by three of the five Goldman insiders occurred at prices higher than the stock's current level. The stock sales by co-general counsel Esta Stecher, vice chairmen Michael Evans and Michael Sherwood, principal accounting officer Sarah Smith and board member John Bryan occurred between October 2009 and February 2010. It was the most active spate of insider selling in three years, according to InsiderScore.com in Princeton, N.J., which tracks and analyzes purchases and sales of stocks by top executives and directors.

Goldman received notice of the possible charges last July, but didn't publicly disclose that fact, later explaining that it didn't consider such a notice material information investors would have needed to value the stock.

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