US securities regulators have opened an informal investigation into the sudden drop of United Airlines’ shares following the re-publication of a six-year-old story about the carrier’s bankruptcy, people briefed on the matter said.
The inquiry, which is in its early stages, comes as the US Securities and Exchange Commission ramps up efforts to crack down on false rumours intended to manipulate share prices.
Anytime anyone spreads false information about a public company over a communication medium like the internet, its message boards, chat rooms or otherwise, that will raise questions as to whether someone is committing securities fraud,” said John Reed Stark, head of the SEC’s office of internet enforcement. But he declined to comment on the United situation.
United’s shares lost more than 75 per cent of their value on Monday before trading was halted after an investment newsletter found a 2002 Chicago Tribune article in a Google News search and, believing United had filed for bankruptcy protection for the second time this decade, published a summary of it on Bloomberg’s newswire.
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