Everything a CEO does can effect his company’s public disclosures. Regular readers will recall the case of the company that was forced to restate its CEO’s resume. A similar type of case was decided earlier this year.
In In re Ariba, Inc. Sec. Litig., 2005 WL 608278 (N.D. Cal. March 16, 2005), the company failed to disclose that its outgoing CEO had personally, out of his own funds, paid another officer $10 million (plus $1.2 million in travel benefits and expenses) to assume the CEO position. Ariba was eventually forced to restate its financial statements to record the payments as capital contributions. In the resulting securities class action, the plaintiffs alleged that the payments were made to “create the false impression that Ariba was doing better than it was” and that “confidence in Ariba’s management would have eroded completely” had it been disclosed that the new CEO had only agreed to accept the position after receiving the payments.
The court found that the plaintiffs had failed to adequately plead that the defendants acted with a fraudulent intent (i.e., scienter). The complaint relied heavily on statements from a confidential witness identified as an “executive assistant,” the existence of GAAP violations, and the individual defendants’ positions at the company. The court held that these allegations did not “constitute the strong circumstantial evidence of deliberately reckless or conscious misconduct with respect to each omission required for Plaintiff to overcome Moving Defendants’ motion to dismiss.”
Holding: Dismissed with prejudice.
The 10b-5 Daily 