Originally posted by voxnor

Originally posted by gessekai332

Originally posted by VirusDancer

Originally posted by gessekai332

you dont need to receive the august 10 financial report in order to know if the game/stock is doing well or not

/cough

That is correct.  You would not have to look at that to know that.

Before the game launched the stock was doing extremely well. Before they sold the game and before they filed the july report there was no indication that the game would tank. sure the price went down bit a month after but prerelease drops are not reliable as they tend to drop a bit before release date when it would go up again. What he had access to were the preorder sales numbers. he knew that the trend of the stock would plummet after release.

 

http://www.oslobors.no/ob_eng/markedsaktivitet/stockOverview?exch=ose&menuCtx=1.1.16&newt__ticker=FUNCOM&newt_graph-stock_tab=12months

 

lets pretend the historical trend of the  stock of an mmorpg game is that it rises the highest before the game is launched then it goes down after release and even lower. what would then make sense is to bail out right before the game even launched right? Sure, but he is the CEO OF A COMPANY. you cannot have ceo's be deliberately crashing their company into the ground every time right before they sell their product. this is horrendous for the jobs and the economy and is illegal.

 

I would just like to clarify that the stock was not "doing well" before launch. Please look at this 6 month graph, and notice the ~$10 dollar decline PRIOR to the game's launch.

 

http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=FUNCOM.OL+Interactive#symbol=funcom.ol;range=6m;compare=;indicator=volume;charttype=area;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=off;source=undefined

the dip you see after the april "hype" pre-release peak is normal for an mmorpg release. its goes up high then goes down again  few months before release. then at release it either goes back up or plummets. in funcom's case he knew it was gonn plummet so he pulled out before then.

Originally posted by Netspook

Originally posted by JeroKane

Originally posted by fallenlords

Making an educated guess at how well a game is going to do, then selling stock based on that guess. Is a whole lot different to having insider information on a company.

 

 

He is the direct cause of the colapse of the Funcom stock.

He knew TSW wouldn't sell well, as they didn't put any serious marketing effort in the game, coupled with the announcement of GW2 and WoW's MoP release date, with as icing on the cake the most stupid time of the year to release a game (mid summer).

I strongly believe that he is the one that pushed the release date by 2 weeks, so he had more time to step down, get off the trader list, so he could dump his shares quietly.

It makes all perfect sense now.

 

He basically betrayed his own company!  If hadn't dumped his shares, the stock wouldn't have fallen as much as it did and as such they wouldn't have to lay off half of their entire staff! destroying the lifes of many and their families.

 

He tried to sell all of his stock (1,5 million shares) but didn't came further than 650.000 before he was discovered!

So he still managed to pull over 11 million dollars from the company. If he had managed to sell all of his shares, he would have basically emptied the entire company's reserve and Funcom would now be facing possible bankrupty!

 

It was a very sleezy lowblow act on his behalf.  Not to mention absolutely stupid! As the norwegian stock market is really small! So everyone knows about everyone! Especially try selling these huge amounts.

The way he did it and how it affected the stock market, is Insider Trading! He will get convicted and will be facing jailtime! And rightfully so!

 

Why is it that everytime someone in the MMO industry lose a job, posters on these forums makes it sound sooooo much worse than for anyone else?

I've lost my job twice due to bankrupsy, and it sure as hell didn't DESTROY my life, and my family is just as fine now as before.

I don't know if you actually mean this or not. If you do, you really need to get out of your basement and face reality every now and then. Especially since you're Norwegian, you should know how retarded this statement is, else you don't know shit about the country we live in.

It's no worse than any other! Did I say that? NO! So get off your high horse man.

The only thing I was saying is that he is directly responsible for all these lay offs, because he caused the colapse of the stock by try dumping his stock behind the scenes.

Originally posted by VirusDancer
The thing you're overlooking here is the timeframe.  Given what you're saying - people on the list would never be able to buy or sell stock...because they would always have information.  Thus the reason why I keep asking if that month thing that was brought up actually exists in Norway.  Because again, based on what you're saying - they would never be able to buy or sell stock...since they would always have some form of insider information.  Is that the case then?  Are people on these lists never able to buy or sell stock?

in the u.s. if the ceo of  company decides to step down it is huge deal. you normally need to give a long notice of your retirement ahead of time and you can only pull out after a time when your inside information becomes public (like after the quarterly financial report).

"Prior to 2001, U.S. law restricted trading such that insiders mainly traded during windows when their inside information was public, such as soon after earnings releases.^[7] SEC Rule 10b5-1 clarified that the prohibition against insider trading does not require proof that an insider actually used material nonpublic information when conducting a trade; possession of such information alone is sufficient to violate the provision, and the SEC would infer that an insider in possession of material nonpublic information used this information when conducting a trade."

This is how it is in U.S., it is pretty much common sense to deter people from crashing their own companies into the ground for their own benefit, so i am assuming it is something similar in norway as well.

Originally posted by gessekai332

Originally posted by VirusDancer
The thing you're overlooking here is the timeframe.  Given what you're saying - people on the list would never be able to buy or sell stock...because they would always have information.  Thus the reason why I keep asking if that month thing that was brought up actually exists in Norway.  Because again, based on what you're saying - they would never be able to buy or sell stock...since they would always have some form of insider information.  Is that the case then?  Are people on these lists never able to buy or sell stock?

in the u.s. if the ceo of  company decides to step down it is huge deal. you normally need to give a long notice of your retirement ahead of time and you can only pull out after a time when your inside information becomes public (like after the quarterly financial report).

 

"Prior to 2001, U.S. law restricted trading such that insiders mainly traded during windows when their inside information was public, such as soon after earnings releases.^[7] SEC Rule 10b5-1 clarified that the prohibition against insider trading does not require proof that an insider actually used material nonpublic information when conducting a trade; possession of such information alone is sufficient to violate the provision, and the SEC would infer that an insider in possession of material nonpublic information used this information when conducting a trade."

 

This is how it is in U.S., it is pretty much common sense to deter people from crashing their own companies into the ground for their own benefit, so i am assuming it is something similar in norway as well.

In Norway, using inside (non-public) information to gain advantages, profits, minimize losses, and so on, is generally illegal. There are loads of exceptions, though, but the law is most strict when concerning larger companies, ie those registered on the stock exchange.

"Crashing their own companies into the ground for their own benefit", isn't necessarily illegal in Norway, but again, for larger companies the rules are stricter. For very small companies it has actually been a common way to get rid of debt. Not so often now as before, but still happens quite frequently.

Curious to hear how this turns out. A friend of mine used to work for Citrix; and their CEO did the same thing; and made off with $135 million in cash from stock sales. The stock quickly plummetted from $130 a share to $12 a share. Nice, eh? Most employees there had $millions in stock on one day; on the next day it was mostly worthless.