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ChoicePoint top execs sold shares
Associated Press
Published February 26, 2005
ATLANTA - ChoicePoint Inc.'s top two executives made a combined $16.6-million in profit from selling company shares in the months after the data warehouser learned that people's personal information may have been compromised and before the breach was made public, regulatory filings show.
ChoicePoint's stock has dropped about 10 percent since last week when the company said criminals had duped it into allowing them access to its massive database.
ChoicePoint says the stock trading was pre-arranged under a plan approved by the company's board. Corporate governance experts say the pattern and timing of the trading by chief executive Derek Smith and president Douglas Curling raises questions.
Securities and Exchange Commission spokesman John Heine declined to say Friday whether the agency is investigating.
Smith told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which reported on the stock sales Friday, that he doesn't believe he did anything wrong, and asserted that he didn't learn about the breach until late December or January. Smith said that in October "we voluntarily found the breach and notified law enforcement."
[Last modified February 26, 2005, 01:14:15]
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