Hyundai at it Again, Possible Insider Trading via MPG Debacle

[tajmioso]

(Reuters) - When South Korean automaker Hyundai Motor Co (005380.KS) announced last month it had overstated the fuel efficiency levels on around one million of its cars in the United States and Canada some investors were left fuming more than others.

Some had already sold their shares before the announcement on November 2. The stock fell 4 percent on November 1 with about 2.2 million shares changing hands, the highest trading volume of the year at that point.

"This smells pretty bad," said Robert Boxwell, director of consulting firm Opera Advisors in Kuala Lumpur who has studied insider dealing patterns.

"It would have fallen into our suspect trading category," he added.

Boxwell spots suspect trading by looking at how much the volume diverges from the average level in the days before a market moving announcement. In the Hyundai instance, the volume was more than five standard deviations, a measure of variation, away from the daily average of 598,741 shares over the past year.

A Hyundai spokeswoman declined to comment.http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...8BK07M20121221

[BlackGTP]

Funny how the thought that insider trading is NOT ok doesn't even cross their mind. Just buisiness as usual.

[tajmioso]

Funny how the thought that insider trading is NOT ok doesn't even cross their mind. Just buisiness as usual.

Lying in general seems like business as usual to them. How much you wanna bet that Fox News would be all over this if it were GM instead?

[YEH]

Possible, but I don't see a great case for it; Hyundai stock was trading up and down days before and had hit the same lows.

Lying in general seems like business as usual to them. How much you wanna bet that Fox News would be all over this if it were GM instead?

Did Fox News cover former Porsche execs using Porsche as hedge fund and manipulating VAG stock?

[jzchev28]

Hyundai, the lying cheating scum of the auto industry.

[Cobaltss_King]

Can you use the saying, if your not cheating your not trying in this situation lol

[Car253]

Cheating, lying and bribes are the way Koreans conduct business, nothing new here.

[mchicha]

Hyundai is a very unethical company. Its in their culture. I would not be surprised if they were corrupting the automotive press through bribes.

[tajmioso]

Hyundai is a very unethical company. Its in their culture. I would not be surprised if they were corrupting the automotive press through bribes.

They are. Its simply no way in the world Hyundai/Kia has gotten some of the passes it has gotten without Hyundai giving hookers, champagne, and yellow envelopes of cash

[germeezy1]

A company that has the word plagiarism in it's mission statement is of course not below anything in their quest for world domination.

[hunchman]

Wouldn't surprise me if "goldman sachs" somehow shows up in this insider trading move.

[JeffInDFW]

The problem is, the benefit they get from each dirty thing they do is always worth any penalty they receive. I've been screaming about how dirty Hyundai is for years. They seem to have learned by watching Toyota and then outdoing Toyota at its game.

Then again, Wall Street is ground zero for cheating, lying, and dirty play.

[ColoradoZQ8]

Cheating, lying and bribes are the way Koreans conduct business, nothing new here.

You know very little about international business. Lying and bribes are common pretty much everywhere outside of the United States. In fact, Daimler didn't know bribes were against the law when they merged with Chrysler and got in to quite a bit of trouble for it.

Virtually every automaker outside of the USA and probably Australia -- bribes or "gifts" government agencies to generate new business. To believe it is simply a Korean trait is incredibly naive.

[ColoradoZQ8]

A company that has the word plagiarism in it's mission statement is of course not below anything in their quest for world domination.

It's kind of hard to accuse an automaker of plagiarism, when most of Hyundai's tech (especially during the early years) was purchased from those respective automakers. Hyundai bought last generation platforms from Honda and powertrains from Mitsubishi..... and they still seem to operate with that mindset.

[jpd80]

Hyundai do not understand how to handle the NTSB and EPA, they don't understand the importance of being seen to be pro active and open door to review of data. A lot of this came about by Hyundai trying to lever and take advantage of questionable data., they got an advantage over other manufacturers with incorrect figures and made no attempt to review the situation ahead of time.