Posted on 06/27/2005 7:48:27 PM PDT by Milwaukee_Guy
General Motors Bars Senior Executives From Buying, Selling Company Stock Indefinitely
DETROIT (AP) -- General Motors Corp. has forbidden senior executives and other employees with access to internal financial information from buying or selling company stock indefinitely, a spokeswoman for the automaker said Monday.
GM spokeswoman Toni Simonetti said a memo was sent to senior executives May 24 barring them and some of their employees from buying or selling stock. Simonetti said she didn't know how many people were affected, but the company has about 400 senior executives.
Simonetti said GM regularly has blackout periods when employees aren't supposed to buy or sell shares, such as before quarterly earnings announcements. But this one is unusual because it's indefinite and was put in place because the company has declined to update its full-year earnings forecast since April.
"What's notable in this one is that it's been mandated right now because of the lack of financial guidance in the public domain," Simonetti said.
excepted, full story at ,
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/050627/gm_executive_trading.html?.v=2
(Excerpt) Read more at biz.yahoo.com ...
Who sent the memo? GM is not a person...so did the senior execs send it to themselves?
"I foresee a great big selloff tomorrow, and a big dip in the DOW."
I shudder to think what would happen once the computerized trading takes off. Even the Market Movers and Interventionists would have trouble putting the brakes on that runaway train!
"I foresee a great big selloff tomorrow, and a big dip in the DOW."
This is going to hit the floor like a bomb. It's basically an admittion that GM management are going to option out and abandon ship.
This is the mother of all end game press releases.
If GM can finesse this news the IR department is loaded with geniuses.
I wouldn't be surprised to see a stop trading order.
"Best time to shop is at the end of the month at the end of the model year."
Hmmmm....let me guess....you sell cars or did at one time?
;-D
Pretty bad taste promotion when a lot of those employee will be losing that discount soon.
Excessive focus on the 'employees' in advertising has always indicted a nervousness to me. I remember Gateway also did a lot of ads about their employees right before their stock sank.
I think we are due for a big correction and this news may be the ticket. Glad I move into cash a few days ago. Oil prices, and inflated real estate prices has to to have an impact sooner or later.
"I wouldn't be surprised to see a stop trading order."
I would actually be more surprised -not- to see a stop order.
Then I'll really go....Hmmmmmmmm......
Middle management execs have their retirements wrapped
up in GM stock...
Imagine their fears of not being able to provide for their
families...
This is not good...
But you can bet the big boys will get out with big bucks...
imo
No, I just consider car dealers fair game. For a car model with only minor cosmetic changes, a 2005 will be a lot cheaper than an almost identical 2006 at the end of September. Any 2005s left by the end of October will be excellent deals.
I keep my cars long enough that the difference in resale value is nominal by the time the car is ready to go. If you want a new car every year or two, the economics are not quite as good, but they are still there.
The commercials I've heard on the radio promoting the employee discount seem to almost define what I view as a union worker. It's not the best way to promote themselves, it only serves to remind you of an organization chocked full of such employees.
That is not a good sign.
"Stop order."
Both my parents worked for IBM and had a large nest egg in IBM stock. They didn't sell as it passed through $100. Now they can only hope.
And how difficult would it be for one ballsy venture capitalist or investment banker to figure out how to buy out GM and turn it around?
Crappy management, whack them, do what you're trained to do...
This is an investment banker's dream.
Every kid at Wharton and Harvard Business must be fantasizing of this.
In the late 70's there were so many large vehicles stuck in lots that some of the dealerships were giving them to school auto shops for the write offs.
For me, it's deja vu, all over again.
The last big insider market trade was in 3/05 - it was a purchase. The chairman bought almost $1.5 million in stock at $29 a share. There's really not much in market sales by execs.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/it?s=GM
The Employee Discount For Everyone appears to have become a complete and total flop.
Why, you might ask? It's because 85% of the products covered by the discount were already heavily overstocked at dealers, and dealers were already wheeling and dealing to get rid of those. There's been no net change in anything - sales, quality, suck level.
My friend and I went car shopping today. Her old Subaru wagon fell prey to a city bus, so she needs new transportation and is in the market for a small SUV or wagon for cheap. We shopped around online and noticed that the Equinox is pretty heavily discounted, so I took her over to test drive it.
When she got in this new Equinox with just 4 miles on the clock, the doors already rattled, the dash squeaked, and the best part of all was when the salesman was demonstrating the features and the glovebox door came off in his hand.
She picks up her new Hyundai Santa Fe tomorrow.
No, I don't think so. I rather suspect the "big boys" are going to go down with "big sentences".
Fiduciary responsibility is a *reality* in the post-Enron world. Gone are the days when upper management could loot and plunder their company and parachute out after the collapse without consequences from the shareholders.
There's a problem right there. They could probably cut 300 of these dead weight executives and save $120 million in salaries alone. That doesn't even begin to calculate the bloated bureaucracies they've no doubt put in place underneath themselves. Too many chiefs, not enough Indians.
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