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Equifax CIO Put ‘2 and 2 Together’ Then Sold Stock, SEC Says

bloomberg.com

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Re: Equifax CIO Put ‘2 and 2 Together’ Then Sold Stock, SEC Says

#11

Post by rossdavidh »

"Three Equifax Inc. senior executives -- Chief Financial Officer John Gamble, and unit presidents Joseph Loughran and Rodolfo Ploder -- sold shares worth almost $1.8 million in the days after the company discovered the breach. Equifax has said those three executives had not been informed of the incident when they initiated the sales."

While I'm not sympathetic to the U.S. CIO named in this article, I find it somewhat dubious that none of the above executives knew anything. In any event, I wouldn't take Equifax's word for it. The finance dudes get a clean bill of health, and the tech guy gets thrown to the feds. Again, not that Ying deserves my sympathy either, but...

Re: Equifax CIO Put ‘2 and 2 Together’ Then Sold Stock, SEC Says

#12

Post by breitling »

cjbprime wrote: post #4

I wonder if this is a step on the way to going after the CEO too.

According to this article, apparently, the other executives hadn't been "informed of the breach" when they sold their stocks.

My bullshit detector is going off the charts.

Re: Equifax CIO Put ‘2 and 2 Together’ Then Sold Stock, SEC Says

#13

Post by ams6110 »

sgroppino wrote: post #5

Appalling. One would have thought that a C-level officer in a listed company would know enough about insider trading as to not do it...

Those are pretty much the same people who know enough insider info to even be in a position to trade on it....

When there's insider trading happening, it's almost always a C-Level person or someone closely connected to him.

Re: Equifax CIO Put ‘2 and 2 Together’ Then Sold Stock, SEC Says

#14

Post by 21 »

rossdavidh wrote: post #11

"Three Equifax Inc. senior executives -- Chief Financial Officer John Gamble, and unit presidents Joseph Loughran and Rodolfo Ploder -- sold shares worth almost $1.8 million in the days after the company discovered the breach. Equifax has said those three executives had not been informed of the incident when they initiated the sales." While I'm not sympathetic to the U.S. CIO named in this article, I find it somewhat…

> The finance dudes get a clean bill of health, and the tech guy gets thrown to the feds.

Maybe the finance dudes are not so retarded to sell their stock immediately after one of the biggest data leaks in history with no ahead of time sell plan, and after googling what was the impact on the stock price of another data leak.

Pretty bad op-sec for a tech guy. Or maybe he's just financially clueless, and doesn't know the the reason this doesn't happen more often (executives selling after really bad news) is exactly because the SEC it's doing a good job policing it and finance guys know that you need a SEC-proof alibi for any sell.

The reason that many stocks drop sharply 5-10% after some company news releases after being relatively flat is exactly because executives are scared shit-less of selling or leaking the info before that news is public.

Re: Equifax CIO Put ‘2 and 2 Together’ Then Sold Stock, SEC Says

#15

Post by withinrafael »

rdtsc wrote: post #9

> Ying was invited to a mandatory conference call. While he didn’t initially join the call, one of his direct reports did, the SEC said. He was trying to sell his stock and didn't wait an official trail of him knowing about it. It would be hard to deny knowing about it once he joined the conference call. Did I read that right? Because that's what it sounds like to me. > “VERY large breach opportunity” "opportunity" w…

Per the complaint, with my notes in brackets:

Project Sparta [breach tooling team] was kept separate from Project Sierra [breach action team] to limit the number of people who knew that Equifax itself had been breached. Those Equifax employees who were only part of Project Sparta were not told that Equifax had been breached, but were instead told that they were working for an unnamed client that had experienced a large data breach [...]

https://www.sec.gov/litigation/complaints/2018/comp-pr2018-4...

Re: Equifax CIO Put ‘2 and 2 Together’ Then Sold Stock, SEC Says

#16

Post by [deleted] »

rdtsc wrote: post #9

> Ying was invited to a mandatory conference call. While he didn’t initially join the call, one of his direct reports did, the SEC said. He was trying to sell his stock and didn't wait an official trail of him knowing about it. It would be hard to deny knowing about it once he joined the conference call. Did I read that right? Because that's what it sounds like to me. > “VERY large breach opportunity” "opportunity" w…

[deleted]

Re: Equifax CIO Put ‘2 and 2 Together’ Then Sold Stock, SEC Says

#17

Post by TomK32 »

rossdavidh wrote: post #11

"Three Equifax Inc. senior executives -- Chief Financial Officer John Gamble, and unit presidents Joseph Loughran and Rodolfo Ploder -- sold shares worth almost $1.8 million in the days after the company discovered the breach. Equifax has said those three executives had not been informed of the incident when they initiated the sales." While I'm not sympathetic to the U.S. CIO named in this article, I find it somewhat…

To avoid this couldn't an exec announce their intention to sell as public and early as possible and cite "divorce/third house/mega yacht" as the reason for the sale?

Re: Equifax CIO Put ‘2 and 2 Together’ Then Sold Stock, SEC Says

#18

Post by zwily »

TomK32 wrote: post #17
rossdavidh wrote: post #11

"Three Equifax Inc. senior executives -- Chief Financial Officer John Gamble, and unit presidents Joseph Loughran and Rodolfo Ploder -- sold shares worth almost $1.8 million in the days after the company discovered the breach. Equifax has said those three executives had not been informed of the incident when they initiated the sales." While I'm not sympathetic to the U.S. CIO named in this article, I find it somewhat…

To avoid this couldn't an exec announce their intention to sell as public and early as possible and cite "divorce/third house/mega yacht" as the reason for the sale?

Any counsel worth their salt won’t let them trade if there is any non-public material news, no matter what other reasons there may be for selling.

This is why most high level execs will put in place pre-arranged plans (10b5-1) for selling at different thresholds and time periods.

Re: Equifax CIO Put ‘2 and 2 Together’ Then Sold Stock, SEC Says

#20

Post by googlryas »

withinrafael wrote: post #15
rdtsc wrote: post #9

> Ying was invited to a mandatory conference call. While he didn’t initially join the call, one of his direct reports did, the SEC said. He was trying to sell his stock and didn't wait an official trail of him knowing about it. It would be hard to deny knowing about it once he joined the conference call. Did I read that right? Because that's what it sounds like to me. > “VERY large breach opportunity” "opportunity" w…

Per the complaint, with my notes in brackets: Project Sparta [breach tooling team] was kept separate from Project Sierra [breach action team] to limit the number of people who knew that Equifax itself had been breached. Those Equifax employees who were only part of Project Sparta were not told that Equifax had been breached, but were instead told that they were working for an unnamed client that had experienced a lar…

I suppose the firewalls between Project Sparta, Sierra, and the rest of the company explain why the 'equifaxsecurity2017.com' or whatever it was called website was a completely separate thing and not part of equifax.com
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