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Comment by matt4077 | Hacker News Reader

Brian Krzanich earns around $20 million p.a. at Intel. He sold 900,000 shares for about as much, total.

Even if he expected the stock price to be cut in half, he'd save just half a year's worth of his regular compensation. And Intel stock barely budged.

That would be an enormously stupid attempt at insider trading. Not only doesn't it pay very well. A CEO of such a company is closely watched by stockholder, the company's own lawyers, the media, competitors, and the SEC. The SEC regularly nails mid-level executives of unknown companies giving tips to their friends' dentists.

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>That would be an enormously stupid attempt at insider trading.

A stupid crime is still a crime. It could all be coincidence that his biggest selloff came just after he learned of the vulnerability but the circumstances merit investigation. And he might have thought the stock price would go down more (I sure did).

Why is this downvoted? This seems like a reasonable debunking of the insider trading theory, unless someone has better information than this.

> This seems like a reasonable debunking of the insider trading theory

Martha Stewart went to jail for avoiding $45,000 in losses [1]. People don't always act rationally. More pointedly, you don't have to act in bad faith to break securities law. The lack of any disclosure surrounding this material issue, which Intel knew about for months prior to the CEO's sale and prior to Intel's Q3 Form 10-Q, is jarring and could result in liability.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ImClone_stock_trading_case

What does that have to do with insider trading, though? I'm reading elsewhere in this thread that this was a scheduled sale ahead of time. Supposing it was indeed pre-planned well before they knew of the vulnerability, cancelling the sale would also be insider trading.

The scheduled sale was for less than 100k shares. He modified the schedule to 900k shared after finding out about meltdown.

That sounds pretty damning then, do you have a link?

> Martha Stewart went to jail for avoiding $45,000 in losses [1].

Your link says exactly the opposite of that:

> On February 27, 2004, Judge Cederbaum threw out the charge of securities fraud which could have led to up to ten years in prison and a $1 million fine. The judge found that "no reasonable juror can find beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant lied for the purpose of influencing the market for the securities of her own company."

> On March 5, 2004, Stewart was found guilty by a jury of eight women and four men on all four remaining counts against her: conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and two counts of making false statements to a federal investigator.

Martha Stewart went to jail for having the temerity to be a target of a federal investigation, not for doing anything.

Because it's makes it less likely but it's not an iron class defense or even a strong defense. Martha Stewart broke the law to save ~45k with her insider trading when she was worth hundreds of millions. People's greed can over take any sort of rationality

One counterargument is that he might have thought there was a chance he'd be asked to step down, and thus his days pulling that kind of money were limited. Just speculating, of course.

Never under estimate how stupid greed can make you [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Coughlin_(Walmart_executiv...

I can't tell if you are concluding that he didn't do it intentionally, or if you are concluding that he was stupid in doing it.

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