In the same year is when Martha Stewart went to Wall Street to witness the first public offering of her company at the New York Stock Exchange. There is a remarkable number of 72 million shares of the business Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Inc. listed at the New York Stock Exchange. Record breaking numbers show that by the end of the day the value of the shares of Martha’s company had increased more than 95% (worth $130 million) in shares in which 96% (worth $1.2 billion) of the voting shares are governed by Mrs. Stewart. In the year of 2001 the company ImClone System Inc. a biopharmaceutical business, spent an enormous amount of funding into the development and research of a new prescription medication. Later that year ImClone received disappointing news that the Food and Drug Administration, also known as the FDA will not be approving the new medication. Meanwhile, this could mean a tremendous financial loss for investors and stock holders. Martha Stewart was one of the investors that could lose money because the new medication was not approved. Mrs. Stewart has a significant number of shares that she owns in the ImClone System Incorporated Pharmaceutical Company. The Chief Executive Officer of ImClone is Sam Waskal. When the CEO received the nonapproved status of the new medication, he notified his stock broker to discard all his shares of the company to keep …show more content…
Therefore, the Securities and Exchange Commission had reasons to start an inspection to decide if Martha Stewart was involved in inside trading.
“Insider trading is defined by the SEC as “Illegal insider trading refers generally to buying or selling a security, in breach of a fiduciary duty or other relationship of trust and confidence, while in possession of material, nonpublic information about the security. However, in an interesting legal technicality, Martha Stewart did not necessarily breach a fiduciary duty to the other investors, since she had no real obligation to inform other investors, which would be the case if she were an officer with the company.”
Alleged and Committed Business