Sky News business editor Michael Wilson
Insider trading - always a sexy story, and it's always going on.
That's what happens when in a market which trades, above all, on information.
If you're in the know then you've got the advantage. What you have, how you got it and what you do with it defines whether or not you've traded illegally.
If you're thinking that's a bit vague, then you're not wrong. That's why so few insider trading cases have been successfully prosecuted in the City.
And those that ended up court were so fiendishly complicated that it was once proposed that the trials would be better conducted without a jury.
But this isn't the case with the huge insider trading story at EADS, which makes the Airbus A380 superjumbo.
The French financial watchdog is passing on evidence of suspicious share sales, within the company, at the end of 2005 and the beginning of 2006.
It's alleged the shares were sold just before the shock announcement of problems with the superjumbo, which sent the firm's shares tumbling.
That the watchdog has passed the information on to the prosecuting authorities, means, according to my 'insider' that some of this is going to stick.
Especially since the new, squeaky clean CEO Louis Gallois, while pledging to defend the 17 individuals involved, has already said that the inquiry will have 'serious consequences' for the company.
That could include his high profile predecessor, Noel Forgeard.
For EADS's main rival, it will be a delicious spectator sport. Boeing, which lost out on a $35bn deal to supply mid-air refuelling planes to the US Air Force, and had an earlier contract cancelled because of a corruption scandal will be privately hugging its corporate self.
British aerospatial executives will be watching with fascination as the much-derided, prickly Franco-German 'relationship' at the heart of EADS is once more put under extreme strain, only a few months after the warring factions forged a peace deal.
For the rest of us? Well, we'll see prosecutors trying to crack a case amid the corporate might of Europe, and the influence of its two most powerful governments.
Prison should await the guilty. Complex it will be, but it should also be quite some courtroom drama.
Insider trading...no can't be, those good people at the top would never do such a thing! Hopefully they "sort them out" and get them a nice cosy prison like the one Martha Stewart spent time in.
Posted by: Elizabeth Davies Cape Town 1 Apr 2008 15:21:28
Sir
Thus far as many a drama, so long as they neither deploy Heather McCartney or Paul Burrel to represent and give evidence accordingly, then I'm sure the truth will be out.
Now,insider trading as you so put it has indeed been ongoing for generations otherwise how do such corporates balance their sheets?
In the case of Airbus, naturally, they would be the first to know of any fundemental defects, and as such parted with their share of cpaital expenditure.
On the other hand, dependant upon the day the registrar transacted the shares, then no doubt interest levels will rise and many a dramatical event adduced.
So in essence complexity will be furthest from the mind as those in the know how know what to look for. So, [How Will I Know-Whitney Houston]?
Posted by: Khalid 1 Apr 2008 12:54:44