Will everybody please lay off the leaker already?
Sure it's a news that a government messenger palmed the unbundling news to his buddy at Telecom. But a "$2 billion leak"? Please. We all know that Telecom's share price knows how to move down. Since Theresa took over, it's fallen from $7.75, and even in the past year it's fallen from a 12-month high of $6.45. Another hit as the unbundling news broke was inevitable. And it probably wouldn't have made one cent of difference if the news had held to budget night rather than being delivered by our cyclist friend. Anyway, email me your comments - if you can make it through the latest Xtra outage - and be in to win one of five PC World CD wallets. (Outrage pays at pcworld.co.nz!)
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Comments
The shock to the Telecom share price would have been just the same, quite possibly worse if announced during the budget, when the entire industry was primed to take a knee-jerk response to any such news.
As for the early leak affecting traders - that is the risk of shares, and those it mostly would have 'hurt' would have been other parliamentary staff taking (illegal) advantage of the same priveledged info... so a few of our overpaid MPs lost value on their Telecom shares. Boo Hoo! You shoulda seen it coming anyway.
Posted by: Paul | May 22, 2006 9:34 PM
The reason many people are upset is not because of the devalueing of Telecom's stock, but because he acted in a immoral way. He was given the document to shred. It was a confidential document, meaning that he had no authority or right to hand it over to people outside of cabinet, making his act wrong. that is why there is so much outrage.
Besides if you were one of the shareholders of telecom wouldn't you rather of had the 2 extra weeks of not losing stock value? I know the Telecom board would of. And those that were planning to trade their Telecom stocks in that time would of.
Posted by: Kane | May 20, 2006 7:32 PM