Senator Chuck Grassley, Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Finance, has written the Securities and Exchange Commission, asking the SEC to investigate the fact that several executives at Schering-Plough sold stock (first reported by BrandweekNRX, later reported by CBS, WSJ, Forbes and NY Times) while they failed to release the ENHANCE trial data.
Senator Grassley writes: "What disturbs me is that, according to news reports, while the Companies failed to release the ENHANCE trial results, several executives at Schering-Plough sold stock. This sequence of events raises serious questions about whether executives at the Companies sold stock because they knew that the results of ENHANCE were negative which in turn would negatively affect stock value. Please take whatever action you deem appropriate in this matter."
Everyone needs to be very careful in jumping to conclusions over the alleged insider trading by Carrie Cox, president of Schering-Plough. Didn't we learn anything at all from the Duke lacrosse players case? Executives in large companies sell stock all of the time for a variety of reasons. Primarily, it is to diversify their assets. A large part of their compensation is in the form of company stock options, and it just makes good sense not to have have all or most of their assets tied up in the stock of one company. Let's let the facts come out before trying and convicting Ms. Cox in the press.
Posted by: Anonymous | January 24, 2008 at 03:17 PM