If you change "sell any holdings of" to "short" that statement sounds absurd, but they're roughly equivalent.
How about not allowing staff to hold stock in companies they might have to deal with?
How about not allowing staff to hold stock in companies they might have to deal with?
"No staff member may own stock or have any other financial interest in a company, enterprise or industry that figures or is likely to figure in coverage that he or she provides, edits, packages or supervises regularly. A book editor, for example, may not invest in a publishing house, a health writer in a pharmaceutical company or a Pentagon reporter in a mutual fund specializing in defense stocks. For this purpose an industry is defined broadly; for example, a reporter responsible for any segment of media coverage may not own any media stock. “Stock” should be read to include futures, options, rights, and speculative debt, as well as “sector” mutual funds (those focused on one industry)."