I don't understand this attitude that "top brass might not know about it". He's the CEO, isn't his entire job to know what's going on in the company? I know we get this idea that rich people just sit back and take in the money, but isn't the reason they are paid so much in the first place because they have in theory a big responsibility on what happens in the company?
You're putting words in my mouth. I didn't say he didn't know about it. I said we don't know WHEN he first knew about it, which is important in the context of insider trading.
According to Google, they found out about it in June, and I think it's fair to assume this was shared with Intel shortly after. From the moment it's shared with Intel, it's fair game. It's up to him to setup the company in such a way that important information like this gets to him quickly.
Even if he knew about it, if it was more than 6 months in advance and he follows all the legally-mandated protocols for setting up a regulated stock trade, isn't he safe?
The marvel is that somehow the news was kept from hitting the media until he had finished his trade, and then was revealed immediately after the transaction was complete. I wonder how that coincidence happened.
The SEC would need to be able to show that Krzanich initiated that rather large selloff based on this inside, privileged info. Given the short document retention policies in place at most companies, this would presumably prove pretty difficult.
The article that started most of the discussion listed the first publicly seen patches at middle of november from Microsoft, and one would assume that a bug that could cause major performance impacts like this makes its way upstairs pretty quickly to Intel.
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/INTC/insider-transactions?p=...