– Irritating . . . but not culpable from the Washington Times.
At 1:43 p.m. on Dec. 27, Mr. Waksal’s secretary took this message from Miss Stewart: “Something is going on with ImClone, and she wants to know what.” That appears to be the closest thing congressional investigators have to a “smoking gun.” At some point that afternoon, Miss Stewart tired of waiting for a return call, so she sold 3,928 shares of ImClone.
At 3:13 p.m. — 90 minutes after Martha Stewart’s message — Bloomberg News noted that, “ImClone Systems Inc. shares fell as much as 9.7 percent on concern about whether the Food and Drug Administration will approve the company’s Erbitux cancer drug, financial news network CNBC reported.” That story appeared even earlier on CNBC. But nobody even had to watch TV to notice “something is going on” with a stock that suddenly dropped 9.7 percent.
By the close of business Dec. 27, ImClone was down 8.4 percent — far too huge a drop to blame on a few family insiders, much less on Martha’s puny stake. Martha appears no guiltier than thousands of other investors, including mutual fund managers, who obviously participated in the big sell-off that day.
For the record I am not a fan of Martha Stewart. I admire her business acumen but couldn’t give a hoot about home decorating and making Christmas more magical with mistletoe toilet seats. It seems that in the wake of other corporate travesties she is being painted in the media as a greedy fiend. What she made on the sale of ImClone stock seems like big cash to us but she probably has a few purses worth just as much. The aftermath for her was much worse – it was reported she lost about $200 million when investors bailed out of their stock in her company. I’m not crying any tears for her, it seems like a ridiculous amount of money to lose over rumor and innuendo.