Anyone else read the New Yorker profile of this douchebag?
Apparently a year or two earlier the magazine had sent a reporter to follow him around for a legit profile about an interesting billionaire who funds cricket and runs the island of Antiqua like his personal fiefdom. Then they apparently later realized this guy is Mini-Madoff and turned it into a hit piece, which Sanford made incredibly easy by openly admitting to being a raging asshole.
Argh, I was sad to discover that Cuban is from my home town, went to my high school AND my college. Considering his level of douchiness, I had assumed he was pure Texas.
@maevemealone: Let me guess Pittsburgh, Mt Lebanon, Indiana University or PITT? You don't think you'll find that level of douchiness in one of those places? When was the last time you were home?
@JwormyK: Pitt douchey, but most Lebo kids get that guff taken out of them after they flunk out of their first year at Pitt and end up back at their parents house going through their second round of rehab to get off the nose candy. At the very least, they don't tend to go on to be billionaires.
There are three ways you can be guilty under this law.
1)If you are an insider/ director/ officer and breach your fiduciary duty to the company/ shareholders by acting on inside information
2) If there is the tipper tippee situation and the tippee knew the tipper was in da wrong
3) If you were given confidential information and told not to act on it but you did.
Looks like Cuban thinks that if he can defend the third prong he is on the clear. The FCC is going to try to say he was guilty of all three. I think it will be difficult to argue he was not an insider. They call him to get advice on major transactions in the business and he was the largest holder of outstanding stock yet he was not a constructive insider? Lastly, this is an FCC filing not DOJ. Even if he is guilty he will only get a fine. He's a billionare . Who Cares?
I care. Insider trading is all case law. This could have real, lasting impact on how insider training is defined and tried, especially because Cuban has the resources to make this a long-term, complicated case.
The funniest thing about this whole story is that he sank $7mil into some shit company called Mamma.com, which presumably was trying to muscle their way into Google's market share...
And another thing! ;D I wish the media would stop hailing him as a tech genius, he was just lucky enough to own an awesome domain name that he sold to Yahoo for a billion bucks at a time when everyone had shitloads of cash for nothing. He's a douche.
@lobstr: As I understand it he sold it for a ton of restricted yahoo stock that he wasn't allowed to sell, he foresaw the tech bubble and shorted it, making a fortune.
He is a pretty sharp guy. Look at all the people who were millionaires in the tech bubble and lost it all.
@jhva3: He may have gotten lucky with stocks but he is far from a tech genius simply because he owned the name Broadcast.com and had one live streaming sample of Hoosier games across dialup bandwith. Yahoo saw the potential, got excited, and threw him a billion or so in stock. He's not a coder, he's not a programmer, he's not a tech innovator, he's 100% lucky.
For the love of God, please don't ask "Any lawyers in the house here?" This whole commenting section is starting to look and sound like the ABA Young Lawyers Division (The "noncreative overclass?")
@chazerium: But really, it's sort of ally mcbealesque up here, where all the lawyers constantly complain about being broke and drunk and having lady problems.
Well, did the CEO have the right to give confidential information to an outsider? I mean, he was a shareholder, but he had no obligation to keep the info private, did he?
Cuban is claiming that the CEO never told him that this was non-public information. And since Cuban never agreed to keep the information private in response to the alleged statement, there's probably daylight to claim that the information was NOT private.
Ha ha ha except no and Cuban's going to lose this case horribly.
It is still considered insider trading if you sell on news that you didn't know was non public information.
People do buy and sell off of news like that every day, it's just that most people are never given a look at when they do this because they don't own more than 5% of a company.
@ADismalScience: Not positive, but I believe Cuban must have some fiduciary duty as well. So for instance if walking down the street someone dropped a letter from Paulson saying that they were going to bail GM out tomorrow, you could trade on that information without breaking any laws (I believe).
From what I remember of law school it has something to do with whether or not the CEO was conspicuously coughing when he gave Cuban said confidential information. I forget the exact wording of the law.
06/19/09
04/21/09
But, alas, he did not put on the condom of fiduciary responsibility.
04/21/09
Apparently a year or two earlier the magazine had sent a reporter to follow him around for a legit profile about an interesting billionaire who funds cricket and runs the island of Antiqua like his personal fiefdom. Then they apparently later realized this guy is Mini-Madoff and turned it into a hit piece, which Sanford made incredibly easy by openly admitting to being a raging asshole.
That's some journalism efficiency!
04/21/09
11/20/08
*knocks on wood*
11/20/08
11/20/08
Let me guess Pittsburgh, Mt Lebanon, Indiana University or PITT? You don't think you'll find that level of douchiness in one of those places? When was the last time you were home?
11/22/08
11/20/08
11/20/08
[www.stephenbainbridge.com]
11/20/08
1)If you are an insider/ director/ officer and breach your fiduciary duty to the company/ shareholders by acting on inside information
2) If there is the tipper tippee situation and the tippee knew the tipper was in da wrong
3) If you were given confidential information and told not to act on it but you did.
Looks like Cuban thinks that if he can defend the third prong he is on the clear. The FCC is going to try to say he was guilty of all three. I think it will be difficult to argue he was not an insider. They call him to get advice on major transactions in the business and he was the largest holder of outstanding stock yet he was not a constructive insider? Lastly, this is an FCC filing not DOJ. Even if he is guilty he will only get a fine. He's a billionare . Who Cares?
11/20/08
I care. Insider trading is all case law. This could have real, lasting impact on how insider training is defined and tried, especially because Cuban has the resources to make this a long-term, complicated case.
11/20/08
And another thing! ;D I wish the media would stop hailing him as a tech genius, he was just lucky enough to own an awesome domain name that he sold to Yahoo for a billion bucks at a time when everyone had shitloads of cash for nothing. He's a douche.
11/20/08
He is a pretty sharp guy. Look at all the people who were millionaires in the tech bubble and lost it all.
11/20/08
11/20/08
11/20/08
11/20/08
11/20/08
11/20/08
Ha ha ha except no and Cuban's going to lose this case horribly.
11/20/08
If Martha had said, "Damn straight I sold those shares on a tip from Sam", she'd still be CEO of the company that bears her name.
11/20/08
He won't go to jail, no. But he'd be smarter to pay the fine and get this over with - Cuban will lose.
11/20/08
It is still considered insider trading if you sell on news that you didn't know was non public information.
People do buy and sell off of news like that every day, it's just that most people are never given a look at when they do this because they don't own more than 5% of a company.
11/20/08
Of course. Like I said, I don't think it will be an effective defense - just explaining the apparent tack the lawyers have taken.
11/20/08
11/20/08
11/20/08