SCO Execs Dumping Stock

luigi6699 writes "According to the Salt Lake Tribune, 'SCO Group executives have sold about 119,000 shares of their company since it filed a lawsuit against IBM in March...' Their CFO started the $1.2 million sell-off just after the lawsuit."

Comments

Let's Put SCO Behind Bars

[Omnifarious]

For this kind of investor fraud, and for extortion, SCO executives should be charged as criminals. Here is an excellent Advogato article summarizing how and more of why.

Source

[tbdean]

At least point at the source:

SCO Group to Shoot Babies

And haven't you heard? On /. we hate BBSpot. It's only on Fark that we love Brian.

Insider trading info...

[cjustus]

Here's the link for those that want to see the complete rundown of insiders over the past little while at SCO...

Re:Where the HELL is the SEC?

[madcow_ucsb]

Well, it is illegal if they're making bogus claims to get themselves in the news with the sole purpose of making their stock take off. Then they dump it all before it crashes...

An even better "REAL" news story at the SL Trib

[Anonymous Coward]

SCO not exactly "loveable" ???

Check out this additional story about SCO at the Salt Lake Tribune website.

Re:SCOX price chart

[hobit]

5 years is even more scary

Sales

[heli0]

SCOX Insider & restricted shareholder transactions reported over the last two months

Re:SEC

[tmhsiao]

There's two ways of looking at it. The more jaded among us might point our fingers at insider trading, and the use of the lawsuit to pump up the stock price before bailing.

Then again, Wilson and the others (most of whom I've never seen interviewed in a Linux/IBM/SCO lawsuit-related article) might be part of the Caldera old-guard who believe that the lawsuit is stupid, baseless, or suicidal and are using this opportune time to pull out of an investment that they believe is doomed to fail.

Re:A better chart

[broeman]

"funny" to see that when SCO started the whole thing, investors believed them, but since IBM, RedHat among others (e.g. Germany) responded it has been a bear-ride *yeeehaa!!*

-> man, the last comment fits my sig

Selling not as descriptive as Buying

[some damn guy]

This doesn't mean they expect to lose. People sell stock all the time to do things like buy a house or invest elsewhere even if the stock is doing well. They could trying to diversify, anyone smart does so at least to some degree, especially if they have a family.

Yahoo lists 82k insider shares sold in the last 6 months. This is only 1.4 percent of insider holdings. Even if the number is much higher this is not a huge exodus yet. In fact it shows a bit of confidence. After all, this was a $2 stock in January.

This could be taken as SCO's officers hedging their bets, however its hard to say because no matter how lousy SCO's situation might be if it loses, these people may be already diversified well enough with outside holdings to risk it all. It's tough to say is really what this means. The CEO's cash salary was only $82k last year. We all know a CEO can't possibly live on that little. Maybe he needed a Bentley. Hard to say.

Now if they were buying shares, that would say a lot more about the case. People sell for many reasons, but there is only one reason to buy: you think the stock is going to go up and stay up until the next selling period for insiders.

I wonder what the various linux companies are doing?

Use the SEC Investor Complaint Form

[MichaelCrawford]

From Let's Put SCO Behind Bars:

SCO's executives may be personally guilty of violating securities law. I understand its executives have engaged in questionable insider trading, possibly to take advantage of the artificial inflation in SCO's stock price resulting from its allegations. The quantities of stock being sold off by SCO executives does not suggest they really believe they are about to win a billion dollar lawsuit. For insiders to trade based on information that is not available to the general public is an offense for which they may be subjected to stern punishment by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The stock of companies offerring Linux products and services may have been unfairly devalued as well. Stockholders in any of the affected companies - either SCO or its competitors - may wish to avail themselves of the Security and Exchange Commission's Investor Complaint Form to ask that something be done about this. You may not even be aware that you have standing to complain: if you invest in any mutual funds that hold shares in SCO, IBM, Red Hat or any other company that offers Linux products or services, then you have a right to ask the SEC to investigate. Check with your mutual fund to fund out which securities are in its portfolio.

The article has a Creative Commons license. Please copy it to your own website, or to other message boards. Maybe someone who subscribes to a financial board could post it there. There is also a UBB code version suitable for message boards that use that format.

Buy Low and Sell High

[PineHall]

http://biz.yahoo.com/t/s/scox.html

Look at SCO VP Wilson did. He bought at very low prices 12,000 shares for $7920 and turned around and sold the shares for about $129,000. That is a nice profit.

2003-07-15 WILSON, MICHAEL SEAN
Senior Vice President 6,000 Option Exercise at $0.66 per share.
(Cost of $3,960)

2003-07-15 WILSON, MICHAEL SEAN
Senior Vice President 6,000 Sale at $10.66 - $10.8 per share.
(Proceeds of about $64,000)

2003-07-14 WILSON, MICHAEL
Senior Vice President 6,000 Option Exercise at $0.66 per share.
(Cost of $3,960)

2003-07-14 WILSON, MICHAEL
Senior Vice President 6,000 Sale at $10.77 - $10.87 per share.
(Proceeds of about $65,000)

Re:A better chart

[MurghMakni]

Since you have to borrow the stock, someone has to loan it to you. Typically, your broker would loan you the stock. SCOX is not widely held and there aren't many shares outstanding, so it is known as a hard to borrow stock, making it very hard to short. I write software for a stock trading company and SCOX is on our list of stocks we can't short.

A different idea

[Phoenix666]

I read in Adbusters once. It was about revoking corporate personhood. Used to be that corporations existed at the sufferance of the public. They were allowed to operate for fixed periods of time, like 5 or ten years. Sort of like the Hudson's Bay Company. At the end of that time they had to petition to renew their right to exist. If they behaved badly, they were squashed like bugs.

Then there was a landmark case in this country back in the 1800's (Santa Clara County v. the Southern Pacific Railroad) that established that corporations are legal persons. They have all the rights that an actual person has, except they exist potentially forever and don't have any of the responsibilities that you and I have. So essentially General Electric is in the eyes of the law an incredibly large, multi-billionaire. But unlike you or I, GE cannot now be put to death for its crimes.

Adbuster suggested that either we revoke corporate personhood, or we institute the death penalty for corporations that cannot behave. Ahem, can anyone think of any corporations we might apply this to?