Odds are Calandra has a case against Marketwatch.
The employer demanded private information from Calandra in order to give it to the SEC, yet they say the SEC was not investigating their company, which forced their employee to resign. This is going to get complicated real fast IMO, they are a California company right?
-------------------------------------------------
MarketWatch.com chief commentator resigns amid SEC probe of stock trades
1/22/2004 7:41:45 PM
cbs.marketwatch.com;
SAN FRANCISCO, Jan 22, 2004 (The Canadian Press via COMTEX) -- Veteran business journalist Thom Calandra resigned as chief commentator for online financial news publisher MarketWatch.com Inc. on Thursday, prodded by a regulatory inquiry into stock trades.
Calandra submitted his resignation after missing a Wednesday deadline to submit his trading records to MarketWatch, which began an internal investigation after learning of the Securities and Exchange Commission's probe, said Larry Kramer, the San Francisco-based company's chief executive officer.
MarketWatch had planned to turn the records over to the securities regulators.
"I'm upset about it," Kramer said of Calandra's decision to withhold his records.
"I can't possibly imagine what this is all about. (Thom) is in the midst of his own legal strategy now."
Calandra decided it was best to leave MarketWatch because he is "under enormous stress," said Dana Welch, his San Francisco lawyer.
The SEC notified Calandra of the informal inquiry last month, seeking information on his stock investments beginning in October 2002. Welch said the SEC hasn't provided further details about its inquiry.
Many reporters and columnists who cover companies with publicly traded stocks can influence markets with the stories they write, and may learn of material information before it's generally known. Many major media outlets prohibit reporters and columnists from directly owning stock in companies they regularly write about.
MarketWatch's policies includes this restriction. If its reporters are assigned to write about a company in which they own stock, they can't trade their holdings for 48 hours after the story is published.
Calandra was treated slightly differently because he was a commentator who had been writing a newsletter for the past nine months. MarketWatch required him to disclose his financial interests at the end of his columns - something that he seemed to do consistently, Kramer said.
"He has always had great integrity," said Kramer, who first hired Calandra as a business columnist at the San Francisco Examiner during the 1980s.
"He's a reporter's reporter. What he wrote wasn't just opinion; it was intensively reported. If you had followed his advice in the newsletter, you would have made a lot of money."
Calandra was among MarketWatch's original employees, becoming the website's editor-in-chief in 1997; he later was promoted to executive vice-president of news.
He stepped aside in 2000 to work on FT MarketWatch in Europe before returning as a columnist in 2002, Kramer said.
MarketWatch paid Calandra $154,168 in 1999, the last time the company disclosed his compensation. |
