Margin Calls Hit Execs Left & Right (AIV, BSX, CPE, CHK, DNR, LTM, PROV, PHM, SPA, STRL, WSM)

There are many C-Suite executive from Wall Street to main Street that didn’t exactly get their stock priorities right.  Many company executives are getting margin calls and are being forced to liquidate their stocks.  Some are for stocks in their own company, some are for stocks and general, and some are just forced to sell to meet margin calls for entirely different reasons unrelated to their companies.  below is a partial list of margin call victims from this week:

Apartment Investment and Management Co.  (NYSE: AIV) Executive VicePresident David Robertson sold another 14,800 company shares early thisweek after the company stock had dropped some 7).

Boston Scientific Corp. (NYSE: BSX) co-founder and Chairman Peter M.Nicholas was forced to sell over $29 million worth of BSX shares, butdon’t feel too bad for him. He’s got plenty more.

Callon Petroleum Inc. (NYSE: CPE) chairman and CEO Fred Callon unloaded110,000 company shares at an average price of $7.84 to meet margincalls.

Chesapeake Energy Corp. (NYSE: CHK) CEO Aubrey McLendon has alreadybeen wiped out of essentially all of his shares worth more than 41billion back at the peak.  The sad part is his forced selling may havebeen right at the lows.

Denbury Resources Inc. (NYSE: DNR) CEO Garteth Roberts had 513,000shares sold in involuntary margin calls.  Interestingly enough, thiswas to meet a real estate loan rather than any stock event.

Life Time Fitness Inc (NYSE: LTM) Chairman & CEO Bahram Akradi wasforced to sell roughly $5.6 million in involunarty stock sales sales tocover margin calls.

Provident Financial Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: PROV) senior VP Richard Galesold 5,000 shares of company stock at an average of $5.76 to meet amargin call.  CEO & President Craig Blunden disclosed early thisweek that he had to unload 11,929 shares of stock the prior week tomeet margin calls.

Pulte Homes Inc. (NYSE: PHM) chairman and founder William J. Pulte soldsome 760,000 Pulte shares to meet margin calls.  These were apparentlyrelated to loan agreements that involved family members
and a charitable organization.  And who said charity was so great….

Sparton Corp. (NYSE: SPA) Chairman Bradley Smith dumped 12,000 sharesof company stock to meet a margin call. This sale only netted about$22,000.00, but he has had to unload over $500,000.00 so far.

Sterling Construction Co. (NASDAQ: STRL) Chief Executive PatrickManning sold an additional 3,594 shares over margin calls, and it lookslike this brings his tally to more than $750,000.00 in margin callsales. A builder, in Houston….

Williams-Sonoma Inc. (NASDAQ: WSM) Chairman & CEO W.Howard Lester has now sold roughly 2.15 million shares to cover margincalls after a last filing this week showed that he sold 1.15 millionshares.  Sadly enough, he nearly sold at the 52-week low.

Jon C. Ogg
October 31, 2008