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Banking, finance, and taxes

Insiders at MBIA & Ambac Buy Shares (MBI, ABK)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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We have seen numerous transactions today in different FORM 4 filings where executives at both MBIA Inc. (NYSE: MBI) and AMBAC Financial Group Inc. (NYSE: ABK) have gone out into the open market to acquire shares.  This is generally thought of as a show of force where executive buy shares after negative news, and yesterday’s negative credit review of both companies caused that drop.

MBIA’s Chairman Joseph Brown also bought 159,000 shares of common stock at $5.91 per share today, giving him 2,611,456 shares of direct ownership.

Ambac’s Chairman and CEO Michael A. Callen bought 10,000 company shares on Thursday for $2.60 per share.  Director Laura Unger disclosed transactions from June 3 for purchases of $103,334 shares at $3.00 in two transactions.  Jill Considine, Philip Duff, and Henry Wallace all also each bought 33,334 shares at $3.00 on June 3.

So far, it seems to at least partly be working after the drumming these guys took yesterday.  MBIA shares are up 4.6% today to $5.89 and Ambac shares are currently flat at $2.49.

Jon C. Ogg
June 5, 2008

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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