{"id":289233,"date":"2021-07-02T03:36:01","date_gmt":"2021-07-02T00:36:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/martha-stewart-sells-stock-in-company-despite-recent-insider-status\/"},"modified":"2021-07-02T03:36:01","modified_gmt":"2021-07-02T00:36:01","slug":"martha-stewart-sells-stock-in-company-despite-recent-insider-status","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/martha-stewart-sells-stock-in-company-despite-recent-insider-status\/","title":{"rendered":"#Martha Stewart sells stock in company despite recent insider status"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Martha Stewart sells stock in company despite recent insider status<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

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Martha Stewart\u2019s stock trading is raising eyebrows \u2014 again.<\/p>\n

The 79-year-old domestic diva \u2014 who famously served five months in prison in 2004 and 2005 for lying to the feds about her sale of ImClone shares \u2014 sold more than $67,000 worth of stock in Sequential Brands Group in a pair of transactions last month, securities filings show.<\/p>\n

The June 4 and June 7 sales \u2014 which had Stewart unloading 3,000 and 3,266 shares at prices of $10.74 and $10.82, respectively \u2014 were completed just two days before Bloomberg reported that the struggling licensing firm was preparing for a possible bankruptcy filing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Shares of Sequential \u2014 which reportedly has been preparing to file for Chapter 11 as it negotiates a deal to sell the Jessica Simpson clothing brand back to the 40-year-old pop singer \u2014 tanked 11 percent on the Bloomberg report. They have steadily deteriorated since. On Thursday, they closed at $8.30 \u2014 off 23 percent from where Stewart unloaded them at an average price of $10.78.<\/p>\n

\"Martha
Martha Stewart sold shares of licensing firm Sequential shortly after leaving the board even as the company careens toward bankruptcy. <\/figcaption>
Getty Images<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There\u2019s no indication that Stewart was aware the Bloomberg report was coming, and troubles at Sequential weren\u2019t brand new at the time. A month earlier on May 4, The Post had reported on the company\u2019s woes amid its Jessica Simpson talks, noting that a deal with lender KKR to install a distressed-debt expert on its board looked like a possible move to prepare for bankruptcy. <\/p>\n

On Thursday, a lawyer for Stewart noted that she had left Sequential\u2019s board in late March, as disclosed in a securities filing, and that the company in April and May made announcements about its year-end results, senior officers\u2019 resignations and changes to its credit agreement, among other matters.<\/p>\n

\u201cMartha had no advance knowledge of any of these decisions,\u201d the lawyer said in a statement. \u201cIn early June, after all of this disclosure and more than two months after she resigned, she made two very small\u00a0stock trades all\u00a0publicly disclosed as required by SEC rules.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Stock
Martha Stewart sold shares in Sequential on June 4 and June 7. She was a director of the company, which Bloomberg reported was headed to bankruptcy on June 9. <\/figcaption>
NY Post photo composite<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The attorney added that Stewart \u201chad no material nonpublic information, her transactions were fully compliant with app<\/a>licable rules and any speculation to the contrary is simply meritless innuendo.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, sources close to the company say it\u2019s not a good look, as Stewart had been on the company\u2019s board and privy to its financial turmoil during the crucial months since December, when the company got a complaint from the Securities and Exchange Commission over its accounting practices. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere have been discussions since last year, going into this year about potential bankruptcy and doing a sale through a bankruptcy,\u201d including at the board level, a source close to the company told The Post.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Stewart hasn\u2019t sold any more stock and remains Sequential\u2019s second-biggest investor with more than 200,000 shares. <\/p>\n

\"Jessica
Jessica Simpson is trying to buy her brand back from Sequential Brands as it careens toward bankruptcy. <\/figcaption>
Instagram<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cAlthough she initially may have believed her trading was proper, she may have stopped trading because someone advised her that the trades could be problematic,\u201d Michael Bachner, a securities attorney with law firm Bachner & Weiner, told The Post.<\/p>\n

Stewart had stepped down along with three other directors as part of a deal with lenders to shuffle the board in exchange for a waiver on its punishing trove of debt. But she is the only ex-director known to have sold shares. Former directors Al Gosset, John Dionne and Gary Johnson didn\u2019t respond to requests for comment. <\/p>\n

A spokesperson for Sequential declined to comment.<\/p>\n

Former executive chairman William Sweedler, meanwhile, remains the largest shareholder and has kept his 13-percent stake intact, according to filings. Ex-director Stewart Leonard Jr., owner of the eponymous New York-area grocery chain, told The Post he has held on to his stake, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not a Wall Street guy or a public stock guru,\u201d Leonard told The Post in declining to comment on Stewart\u2019s trading, about which he said he knows nothing. \u201cAt this point, I\u2019m not selling. I\u2019ll hang on and see what happens.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Martha
Martha Stewart arriving at Manhattan federal court in New York on January 20, 2004. <\/figcaption>
Bloomberg News<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If Stewart had learned that Sequential was preparing for bankruptcy by virtue of her director\u2019s seat, \u201cit would be improper for her to trade on that information even if that information is the subject of public speculation,\u201d said Bachner, the securities lawyer. \u201cKnowing something as a fact is more significant to an investor than merely speculating that the event will occur \u2014 no matter how intelligent that speculation might be.\u201d<\/p>\n

But other experts say the situation is not so clear-cut, despite Stewart\u2019s recent director status.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen she sold the stock, she either had material, nonpublic information or she did not,\u201d securities attorney Pablo Quinones told The Post. \u201cIf the material information was a pending bankruptcy and that information was public when she traded, then it would not matter that she previously learned of the information while she was a director.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Stewart joined Sequential\u2019s board in 2015 when the firm bought her company, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia<\/a> for $353 million. Four years later in 2019, Sequential sold the brand to another licensing firm for $140 million less than what it paid for the company.<\/p>\n

At the time, sources told The Post that Stewart\u2019s pay and perks, including $1.8 million in base pay plus a $100,000 expense account, first-class travel<\/a>, hotel accommodations and hair and makeup services was too rich given the brand\u2019s performance.<\/p>\n

In 2004, Stewart began serving five months in prison and five months of house arrest along with two years of probation for obstruction of justice and for lying to federal investigators about why she sold her 3,928 ImClone shares, which saved her only $45,673 in losses.\u00a0<\/p>\n

ImClone\u2019s shares plummeted 16 percent two days after her trade on news that the Food and Drug Administration did not approve its cancer drug. The company\u2019s chief executive, Sam Waksal, alerted family members about the bad news and they in turn sold over $10 million of ImClone stock before the FDA news came out.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Waksal and Stewart at the time had the same broker, who tipped off Stewart.\u00a0\n <\/p><\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#Martha Stewart sells stock in company despite recent insider status” Martha Stewart\u2019s stock trading is raising eyebrows \u2014 again. The 79-year-old domestic diva \u2014 who famously served five months in prison in 2004 and 2005 for lying to the feds about her sale of ImClone shares \u2014 sold more than $67,000 worth of stock in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":289234,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/07\/02.1F027.Martha.WEB_.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[110824,48427,104493,70359],"class_list":["post-289233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-7-1-21","tag-martha-stewart","tag-sequential-brands","tag-stocks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289233\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}