Did HP Bilk Its Shareholders? 144
jfruhlinger writes "About a month ago, HP announced that it was getting out of the PC, tablet, and mobile phone business to focus on software services, at which point, rather predictably, HP's stock plunged. Obviously, HP's leadership had been working on this plan for some time before it was announced, which leads to the question: did they deliberately mislead their stockholders by not being more transparent? That's what a shareholder lawsuit against the company alleges. How the courts treat the suit could have interesting implications for how transparent public corporations need to be about future strategy."
Re:Insider trading (Score:2, Informative)
It's only insider trading if only you know about it and you are not supposed to. If HP says to the world "We are kicking some ideas around the office about get out of the commodity PC space.", then this would be a perfectly legal thing to use to evaluate their stock.
Re:Insider trading (Score:5, Informative)
It's not if you knew about it and weren't supposed to, it's if you knew about and took action on that information, prior to the information being made public. Insiders obviously knew about the plan, but if they didn't use that information to buy or sell stock prior to the release of the information it is not insider trading.