BP Oil Spill Crisis Manager Managed Crisis By Selling BP Stock

A good rule, if not of law then at least of etiquette, is that if you are the BP employee in charge of BP's "oil collection and clean-up operations in the Gulf of Mexico and along the coast," don't immediately go and sell all of your and your family's $1 million worth of BP stock and stock options before everyone finds out the full extent of the disaster. Come on! At a bare minimum that is extremely insensitive.

Is it also illegal? The Securities and Exchange Commission thinks so, since it today charged former BP crisis manager Keith Seihan with insider trading for doing that. And Seihan settled the charges by agreeing to pay about $224,000 in fines and disgorgement. Which seems sensible of him, because, one, would you want to go tell a jury why this trading was perfectly fine? And, two, because he seems to have avoided about half a million dollars in losses by acting fast to sell his stock, so at $224,000 he's getting off pretty cheap.1