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Bill Gates Fined $800,000 Over Stock Purchases
Bronz writes "CNN Money is reporting that Bill Gates has been fined $800,000 for violating antitrust waiting period for stock purchases. The department alleged that Gates bought more than $50 million worth of stock in ICOS Corp. through his personal investment trust and failed to notify antitrust officials about the purchase, as required." It's also clarified: "The technical incident has nothing to do with the government's massive antitrust battles with Microsoft."
Oh, sure! Martha Stewart is facing possible jail time, but Bill Gates merely pays a fine! Maybe my wife is right...
it's a woman thing.
Yes, I fully know that there is no further wrongdoing than a technical disclosure oversight, but really, there must be something else they can "stick him" with.
On the other hand, MS Drugs !?!?
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
nothing to do with the government's massive antitrust battles
But while we were looking through all your belongings we noticed this little tidbit and jumped on it!
I make my face look like this and concerned words come out.
Gates was fined, not the company itself. It looks like Gates is closely watched, isnt it ?
"...a generation of kids has grown up thinking Trance is the shittiest music since country and western." - Paul van Dyk
It's important to note that the violations CONTINUE. And let's face it - this money doesn't go to feed or clothe poor people - it goes....where DOES it go?
Speaking of abusing the system - check my sig.
Lindows Steals Copyrighted Art and Promotes Porn
The Federal Trade Commission said it had warned Gates about a similar reporting infraction when his personal investment trust bought shares of Republic Services Corp. (RSG: Research, Estimates) in November 2001. The acquisition brought his stake to more than 10 percent of the outstanding shares of the waste-hauling company.
Antitrust rules require that entities must file with the government when their holdings exceed 10 percent of a company's stock.
. Anyway, when you are worth $40 billion you can afford these "luxuries."
Happy Trails!
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
It cost Mr. Gates $800,000 to buy $50,000,000 worth of stock. So, I guess that's 1.6% commission for the SEC?
Casual Games/Downloads
Please *mod parent up*! I was going to say the same thing. Then again, maybe the editors of /. enjoy having this website being perceived as a bunch of petty anti-MS zealots with an axe to grind, credibility be damned.
Memo to editors: You do no favors for the popularity of [insert favorite OS here] by posting sophomoric, vindictive, and largely irrelevant stories about Bill Gates. On the contrary, it makes you (and what you advocate, by association) look immature.
Just stop it.
In Soviet Russia, Chuck Norris will still kick your ass.
The whole purpose for these filings is to keep investors informed so that those who control the company can't cash out and leave the average investor holding the bag.
Given that, the real question is: if Billy Boy had filed as required, how much more would it have cost him to buy the same number of shares. If that value is more than $800k, he made money on the deal. If not, the fine was justified.
Minne-snow-da: Winter is comming...
The fine... someone gets fined $800k or a million dollars... where does that money go?
I imagine it goes to supporting the entity that discovered and prosecuted the problem, but I could be wrong. Afterall, taxes on cigarettes are supposed to go for healthcare, right? And taxes on gasoline go to transportation infrastructure, right? Right?
It just gets sucked into the big government void.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Should allowances be made for certain individuals just because they have the economic power to sway the law? Of course not, just like you or I if we make a mistake then we should be responsible for it.
It's not about the money, but about enforcing the law, and generally, if the penalty doesn't hurt then it won't hurt to do it again.
Hmm... the stock price has been dropping, has a PE of -15.96! Wonder if Bill knows something?
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
I can't tell if this is just a problem of the rich and clueless, or if Bill really doesn't think that he has to abide by the rules that everyone else does.
Let's see. According to CNN, on May 2002, when Gates acquired the $50M shares, stock was worth around $25. Now it's around $32. If he hadn't sold any, that stock would be worth around $64M today. Earn $14M illegally and pay $800K. If I were Gates, I would continue doing this. The important thing is the fine is not an incentive to make Gates from doing something similar in the future.
This diversification along with his philanthropy through his foundation (though sometimes self-serving) is a relatively new thing. For many many years, what always shocked me was his decidedly undiversified portfolio. He kept an extremely high percentage of his total wealth in Microsoft stock for a very long time. While it could certainly have backfired and any financial advisor would say it was foolish and overly risky, it is the single biggest reason he is the richest man in the world and not 2 or 3. Paul Allen diversified very early on and had a much more balanced portfolio but also got blown away by Gates and his MSFT only holdings.
Vote Quimby.
Gates only makes around $180,000 per hour in interest
Or he would, if the entirety of his $40Billion in assets were liquid. In reality, most of his worth is tied up in (M$ and other) stock, which he can't touch without paradoxically causing it to lose value.
[That fine is] the equivalent of almost two hundred bucks for someone making $100K a year.
And if someone making $100K a year got a $200 parking ticket, do you think they'd start being more careful about where they park, or would they write it off as "the cost of parking" and keep parking in front of the hospital?
but their names now live on in their philanthropic works.
Only because philanthropy is a way to avoid the government taking half of the estate upon your death.
Give it away to the charity of your choice or let the government take half upon your death.
It's not like you get to take it with you when you go:)
All the hand-wringing about "death taxes" is such bullshit.
Bill Gates Sr., one of many, thinks that the ideas floating around to eliminate the current high inheritance taxes are a bad idea and would be devastating to charities.
Low inheritance taxes preserves an effective nobility and leisure class that will use an accident of birth to make a living as a shareholder. Arguably the builders of wealth should obtain such benefits - not their progeny. Descendents should be provided equal opportunity to compete based on their own merits and talents.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
It's really simple.
Behind Door Number One there is $50 billion dollars in cash.
Behind Door Number Two there is also $50 billion dollars in cash, but there are also fifty thousand full-time employees who make and sell hundreds of different products in dozens of different countries, producing $30+ billion in sales revenues, every year. In addition there's God alone knows how many buildings, computers, vehicles, and for all we know maybe secret alien technology borrowed from the Grays. The collective opinion of Wall Street - which doesn't even know about the UFOs - is that the whole thing is worth maybe $250 billion.
Bill Gates doesn't own 10% of what's behind Door Number One, he owns 10% of what's behind Door Number Two. And he also owns a bunch of other less spectacular stuff. Put it all together and it sort of makes sense, although his personal net worth is still frequently overstated.
One thing to keep in mind is that a lot of his net worth is in unrealized gains. It's taken him many years and a great deal of regulatory effort to get his holdings down from 20% to 10%, and it was probably only possible because he was doing it to fund charitable efforts and other investments. The difference between Bill's net worth and Microsoft's cash is that Bill can't buy a Nimitz-class carrier task group and invade Panama, but Microsoft (at least in theory) could.
-Graham
I was thinking the other day that when it comes to the law, fines should always be calculated as a percentage of your income. Being rich comes with all sorts of great advantages, but being able to ignore criminal penalties because the fee is so small shouldn't really be one of them.
I thought of this mainly in the fact that when I was poor, a speeding ticket could ruin my budget for months, whereas now I am pretty well off and couldn't give a damn about a $100 ticket. I'm not much of a speeder anyways, but it just doesn't make sense that the penalty is less meaningful to me just because I make more money.
I know there are punative damages in civil cases (which are great, but shouldn't go to the plaintiff as they do now). Is there any similar system in criminal cases? Certainly not in most fines that I see -- they're flat.
Just a wondering...