Frist Sold Hospital Shares Before Drop

[johnfunk]

Smells like insider trading to me...

Frist Sold Hospital Shares Before Drop
By JONATHAN M. KATZ, Associated Press Writer
Tue Sep 20, 9:37 PM ET

WASHINGTON - Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a potential presidential candidate in 2008, sold all his stock in his family's hospital corporation about two weeks before it issued a disappointing earnings report and the price fell nearly 15 percent.

Frist held an undisclosed amount of stock in Hospital Corporation of America, based in Nashville, Tenn., the nation's largest for-profit hospital chain. On June 13, he instructed the trustee managing the assets to sell his HCA shares and those of his wife and children, said Amy Call, a spokeswoman for Frist.

Frist's shares were sold by July 1 and those of his wife and children by July 8, Call said. The trustee decided when to sell the shares, and the Tennessee Republican had no control over the exact time they were sold, she said.

Time to demand Frist step down as Majority Leader .

[Zynx]

1. That's the most clear cut example I have seen in a long time.

Difficult to prove exactly, but the timing looks to be more than coincidental.

[global1]

2. Didn't Something Like This Land Martha In The Pokey? ...... n/t

[pepperlove]

3. Shades of Martha Stewart

but bet he doesn't get a day!

[Tesla]

Send this to Martha!!

[Stephanie]

5. Shades of Harken Oil

And George Bush Junior.

[rkc3]

8. A day! There won't even be an inquiry.

[pepperlove]

17. I suppose not

and that sickens me. Again.

[tanyev]

4. Gosh, his timing is just as good as ol' George managing

to dump his Harken shares quite a few years ago.

[ProfessorGAC]

14. I'm Sure It's Just Luck

I can't believe Frist had inside information on shares of a company controlled by his own family. Well, wait. Yeah, i can believe that. A family of doctors who quit treating patients so they could run a hospital administration firm. So, they don't care about the doctoring. They care about the MONEY! Yeah, i can believe it after all.
The Professor

[DU9598]

6. Martha

Wouldn't it be grand if Martha would speak out about this? She obviously has to have some bitterness about the crap that this government did to her. If nothing else the FBI had better at least get this guy in for questioning. If they question him I bet he will fudge the truth or flat out lie and that is supposedly what they got Martha for. That said, I still never heard proof that Martha actually lied about the sale or documents.

[Nye Bevan]

7. "Step down as Majority Leader"? Come on!

We need to demand *jail*.

[eleny]

20. Resign the Senate in disgrace!

[Cassandra]

9. But it can't be insider trading when Republicans are involved...

because they know so little about the companies that they run, right?

[Wickerman]

10. If his last name were Clinton

the Grand Jury would already be convened.

[pepperlove]

11. Amen to that!

That is why I have spent that last 5 years on *'s arse --- they did it to Clinton for 8 full years and, by all that is holy, I will continue as long as * is sitting his * in the oval office chair.

[GreenPartyVoter]

12. Or if there was a (D) after his name...

[Fridays Child]

13. When will the law that these people are so sure they're above ...

...catch up with them?

[KharmaTrain]

15. Now He'll Put Them In A Chenney "Trust"

Watch...this weasel will say this is nothing unusual and he's not profiting. He'll claim he's put the "proceedes" in a trust that he can't personally gain from while he's still in public office. Yeah, right.

Anyone have an idea how much the $200 million Crashcart put in escrow in 2000 when he left Haliburton...and it's current value. Yep, he can't put the cash in his pocket, but he sure can use those assets in buying a mansion.

Yep, the rich get richer. Sounds like the rats are starting to ransack the ship one more time before they're forced to jump off. All these tax games smell.

[Inland]

16. Wow, if the president weren't also an inside trader

Really, the only way for Frist to stay out of trouble is to have an advance plan for selling stocks, or have a president who also made huge bucks selling in advance of bad news.

"The overall purpose of Rule 10b5-1 is to make it easier for the SEC to enforce the prohibitions on insider trading against persons who trade while in possession of material nonpublic information. At the same time, the SEC created an affirmative defense to enable insiders to trade so long as they did so pursuant to a plan created prior to the time they acquired the material information. In simple terms, if you sell stock pursuant to a properly established plan, you will not be liable for insider trading even if you became aware of material information subsequent to the time you established the plan and before your trade occurred."

[annabanana]

18. Put this on the "Prosecution List" for after the '06 election..

(List is getting good and long now, boy!)

[Snotcicles]

19. Can anyone give me the dollar amount in fines the HCA had to

pay for medicare fraud?

[rzemanfl]

21. FUCKING CROOK! n/t

[johnfunk]

22. KICK... Frist out of the Senate

n/t

[stillcool]

23. Article form May 6 by Melissa Davis

<Just look at HCA Chairman Jack Bovender. On Feb. 2, with HCA's stock in an upswing on hopes for a recovery, Bovender sold 500,000 shares underlying options, clearing some $9 million. Other HCA insiders soon rushed to follow his lead with multimillion-dollar transactions of their own.>
<The same month that Bovender cashed in, two senior managers -- Treasurer David Anderson and Chief Investment Officer Noel Williams -- joined three vice presidents in executing or filing to do multimillion-dollar transactions.>
<"Historically, HCA insiders have been lucky in knowing when to sell," Young says. "Perhaps investors should be pondering if it is luck or a very keen understanding of the future.">
http://www.google.com/search?oi=stock&q=stocks:HCA&prev...