MarketWatch Commentator Quits nynewsday.com
By Susan Harrigan
STAFF WRITER
January 23, 2004
MarketWatch.com, one of Wall Street's biggest providers of online business news, yesterday said that Thom Calandra, its chief commentator, has resigned, and that federal regulators are probing his trading activity.
The San Francisco-based company, which owns the CBS MarketWatch financial news Internet site, said Calandra resigned for personal reasons.
MarketWatch said the Securities and Exchange Commission is conducting an "informal inquiry" into Calandra's trading dating back to October 2002. The company said it is cooperating fully with the probe and voluntarily providing investigators with documents. MarketWatch also said it began an internal investigation after Calandra notified it of the federal inquiry in December.
John Heine, an SEC spokesman, declined to comment. Calandra declined to comment through his attorney, Dana K. Welch of the San Francisco firm Ropes & Gray. Calandra "has been under enormous stress" due to a heavy workload and the inquiry, Welch said yesterday in an interview. "So he decided what he really needs to do is to take time out to focus on things which are important to him, which are his family."
Calandra was one of the founders of MarketWatch and writes a subscription newsletter, The Calandra Report. MarketWatch said it is terminating the newsletter and will give all subscribers pro-rated refunds.
In November, Forbes magazine reported that Calandra had gone on overseas trips financed by a mining company that he plugged in his newsletter and on MarketWatch TV broadcasts, and in which he owned shares. Calandra, who disclosed the trips and his ownership of the shares in his newsletter, told the magazine that he saw no problem with the situation.
A story posted on MarketWatch.com yesterday said that Calandra was allowed to purchase stocks that he covered as long as he disclosed the fact to readers. But he had to comply with company policies prohibiting journalists from trading shares of a company if they know a story about the firm will soon appear, and for 48 hours afterward, the story said. Calandra's departure came as stock ownership by employees of business-oriented news outlets is receiving closer scrutiny. Earlier this month, CNBC, the business cable network, announced that not only its managers and news staff, but also their spouses and dependents, would no longer be able to own individual stocks other than those of their employer. The action followed criticism of CNBC for allowing star reporter Maria Bartiromo to interview the chairman of Citigroup although - as she disclosed at the time - she owned 1,000 shares of Citigroup stock.
Joshua Mills, director of the journalism program at Baruch College in Manhattan, said policies regulating journalists' ownership of individual stocks are "uneven" and that the safest thing for media companies to do is prohibit such investments. |
