SkyWest Insider Trading

[JayAre]

Here is an article in todays Salt Lake tribune



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Article Last Updated: 5/08/2006 11:06 PM


Insider trading at Skywest
Dozens of transactions were not reported to the SEC, shareholders told
By Paul Beebe
The Salt Lake Tribune
Salt Lake Tribune

SkyWest Inc. has alerted shareholders and the Securities and Exchange Commission that documents disclosing dozens of insider stock trades going as far back as 1996 were either misplaced or never given to federal regulators.
The St. George-based regional airline said that during a review of its records for 2005 the company discovered dozens of disclosure reports required to be filed by company officers such as CEO Jerry Atkin and directors were not in the SEC's electronic database.
In some cases, SkyWest received copies of disclosure documents and believed they were filed on time by the officer or director, but no record exists at the SEC. In other cases, grants of options were never reported.
The mistakes were reported to investors in the company's annual proxy statement sent in March to shareholders in advance of SkyWest's annual meeting earlier this month. The executives and directors also submitted dozens of disclosure documents to the SEC before the meeting to correct the oversights and discrepancies.
The proxy shows 10 current officers and directors, as well as one former director, have submitted 43 disclosure reports covering 172 insider transactions representing thousands of shares that were not filed in a timely fashion. Besides Atkin, executives include chief financial officer Bradford Rich and Ron Reber, president of SkyWest Airlines, a subsidiary. The other late filers are directors. Hyrum Smith, who resigned as a director in January, is also listed.
SkyWest shares traded from $3.09 to $4.93 in 1996, with stock splits in 1998 and 2000. In 2005, the share price ranged from $16.05 to $32.84.
Michael Kraupp, SkyWest's treasurer, declined to comment. The proxy contains all the information the company can provide, Kraupp said Monday through an assistant.
Insider trading is the buying or selling of company shares by corporate officers. The practice is legal when trades are based on information in the public realm. It becomes illegal if sales or acquisitions occur before sensitive information becomes public.
It's possible that many of the documents were lost because the old method of disclosing insider trades was complicated.
The Internet-based filing system used today replaces more-cumbersome paper procedures that relied on mail and data entry, opening the possibility of something getting lost, said Alan Jagolinzer, an accounting professor at Stanford University's graduate school of business.
"At the time, there were a lot of paper filings. There was a lot of multiple handling throughout the system. I don't know how you could infer anything," Jagolinzer said.
Before 2002, the SEC required company executives to disclose stock transactions within 10 days after the close of the month in which the transaction took place. The rule was changed to require executives to report transactions within two business days. Failure to do so opens the company and individuals to civil penalties if the SEC determines that violations have taken place.
SEC spokesman John Heine would not say whether the agency is conducting any sort of inquiry, adding that the agency does not comment on specific cases unless commissioners issue a ruling.
The SEC is the primary regulatory agency for the securities industry.
pbeebe@sltrib.com

here is the link
http://www.sltrib.com/business/ci_3800056
There was also a list of names and number of transactions in the print version