[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
[FYI] SEC May Lack Basis to Bar Stock Touting
- To: debate@fitug.de
- Subject: [FYI] SEC May Lack Basis to Bar Stock Touting
- From: "Axel H Horns" <horns@t-online.de>
- Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2000 20:50:23 +0100
- Comment: This message comes from the debate mailing list.
- Organization: PA Axel H Horns
- Reply-to: horns@t-online.de
- Sender: owner-debate@fitug.de
http://www.lawnewsnetwork.com/practice/techlaw/news/A18579-
2000Mar14.html
------------------------------- CUT ---------------------------------
SEC May Lack Basis to Bar Stock Touting
Some view Web chat boost of share prices as naughty but legal
The National Law Journal
March 14, 2000
Early in the Securities and Exchange Commission's Internet
enforcement efforts, agency staffers came across a problematic Web
site. Eager to shut it down without "making a federal case of it,"
John Reed Stark, the chief of Internet enforcement at the SEC, called
the site's designer and launched into a reading of his rights. The
alleged offender interrupted, "Wait a minute -- I'm only 13." Stark
and the others on the call were shocked, but figured out how to
sanction the boy: "We told his mother," Stark said.
[...]
Some say privately that the SEC is stretching the law to fit what is
the alleged bad behavior: launching a Web site to tout a few thinly
traded stocks that Colt and the other defendant had purchased -- and
for which they had executed sell orders before making the
recommendations. One lawyer posited that such conduct can be enjoined
only when the person making the recommendation is an investment
adviser who owes a fiduciary duty to his clients. But without that
duty, the conduct cannot be considered illegal "front-running."
[...]
------------------------------- CUT ---------------------------------