SEC seen probing stock sale by Amazon's Bezos
Big surprise?? He was a former "investment banker", so he knows the game.
And like my wife said, It's all a manipulation.....
NEW YORK, March 9 (Reuters) - The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is investigating stock sales by Jeffrey Bezos, the chairman of Internet retailer Amazon.com Inc. (NasdaqNM:AMZN - news), the New York Times reported in its online edition on Friday.
Citing a person close to the matter, the paper said the probe centers on stock sold by Bezos in early February just before a Wall Street firm released a negative research report on the company.
In documents filed with regulators on February 2 and February 5, Bezos said he intended to sell 800,000 Amazon shares worth about $12.2 million, the paper said.
One week earlier, Amazon executives had received an advance copy of a research report by Ravi Suria, a convertible bond analyst at Lehman Brothers, the paper said.
Suria's report, which was made public on February 6, questioned Amazon's ability to continue operating through 2001 and said the company's deteriorating financial condition could subject it to a credit squeeze this year, the paper said.
Bill Curry, an Amazon spokesman, said that Bezos sold the shares to raise money and diversify his holdings and that the sales had nothing to do with the release of the Lehman Brothers report, the paper said.
As is its custom, the SEC declined to say whether it was investigating the sales by Bezos, the paper said. |
