Intel Says CEO Dumping Tons of Stock Last Year 'Unrelated' To Big Security Exploit (gizmodo.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: Late last year, the CEO of Intel sold millions of dollars in company stock, as CEOs often do. The sale appears to have occurred while developers were reportedly rushing to fix a major security flaw affecting Intel processors made in the last decade. According to a report published by the Register this week, "a fundamental design flaw in Intel's processor chips has forced a significant redesign of the Linux and Windows kernels to defang the chip-level security bug." Windows and Linux developers have reportedly been working to address the issue since November. As our friends at Gizmodo ES pointed out, Intel's CEO Brian Krzanich sold roughly $11 million in company stock at the end of November. Counting the employee stock options Krzanich exercised, the CEO unloaded 245,743 shares, leaving him with 250,000 remaining shares -- the minimum Krzanich is required to own according to the company's bylaws, the Motley Fool reported. To be clear, this isn't proof of some insider-trading conspiracy. Contacted by Gizmodo, an Intel spokesperson called the sale "unrelated," and said it "was made pursuant to a pre-arranged stock sale plan (10b5-1) with an automated sale schedule."

Comments

Someone needs to shoot some CEOs

[Anonymous Coward]

The class war is in full effect. Time you picked a side.

Re:Someone needs to shoot some CEOs

[Nidi62]

The class war is in full effect. Time you picked a side.

CEOs and their obscene salary and bonus schedules are put in place by board members.

Ah, yes. The board members who themselves are CEOs for other companies and who get paid salaries and get benefits that are comparable to other CEOs. The whole thing is more incestuous than a medieval French court.

Re:It's not a crime

[nucrash]

Just donate to the right candidates and you will never have any legal problems.

Bad optics, but not likely illegal.

[CraigCruden]

The sale was more than likely schedule well in advance of that date - which would be before the defect was reported. As such he is not trading on insider information since he was not relying on any insider information. It doesn't necessary look good, and if he were interested in the optics of it -- he could have cancelled it... but it was not a requirement. The majority of his assets are likely Intel stock by the fact he gets paid in it - and financially it makes sense to diversify - especially with the renewed competition with AMD.

So lucky, bad optics, but nothing illegal.

Also, The stock price is actually at or above the price that it was in November...

Re:Bad optics, but not likely illegal.

[Ecuador]

I'd be interested to know if he schedules a sale every year and usually cancels ;)
I mean that's what I would do if I wanted to make my insider trading legal, always have a scheduled sale just in case...