Annals of news-burying, Overstock edition
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Friday was the Financial Follies — which means that most of New York’s financial journalists descended on the Marriott Marquis for the evening. The joke going around was that Friday afternoon would be a great day to bury bad news, a la Jo Moore, on the grounds that even fewer people would be around to cover it than would normally be working on a Friday after the markets close.
But Overstock, it seems, took the joke literally, waiting until 4:02pm on Friday to announce that it had received a delisting notice from the Nasdaq. (And the wait was a long one: they received the letter the previous day.) Naturally, the headline of the release (“Overstock.com Announces Receipt of NASDAQ Notification Letter”) gives no hint as to the importance of the contents.
Gary Weiss, of course, noticed; I suppose we’ll have to wait until Monday to see whether the news has any effect on the stock.
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Overstock took the joke literally and is literally a joke:
http://whitecollarfraud.blogspot.com/200 9/11/open-letter-to-securities-and-excha nge.html
Felix,
In this case, there is no story with Overstock. The accountant notified them too late to complete formal changes and notifications, so they filed informally. Although it’s surely endless fun to provide links showing Byrne’s fight with short sellers, I’m still curious what the actual issue is with this incident.
They failed to certify their financials. That is, the financial officers of the company will not sign off on SOX compliance.
That surely is not “no story”.
It’s so much of a “non story” that Grant Thornton says Overstock LIED.
http://garyweiss.blogspot.com/2009/11/gr ant-thornton-to-sec-overstockcom-lied.ht ml
http://norris.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/ 23/the-auditor-disagrees-with-overstockc om/
Grant Thornton says Overstock.com lied:
http://whitecollarfraud.blogspot.com/200 9/11/open-letter-to-securities-and-excha nge_23.html