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Martha Stewart Insider Trading Scandal

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America’s most famous homemaker, Martha Stewart, is one of the business mavens involved in an insider trading scandal in the late 2001. Born in 1941 as Martha Kostyra, she developed a passion for gardening, cooking, and housekeeping at an early age. Her mother taught her the basics of baking, cooking, canning, and sewing while her father introduced her to gardening. She married Andrew Stewart while attending Barnard College in New York City. Martha started her career as a successful stockbroker on Wall Street. In order to satisfy her childhood passions, she left the stockbroker business and opened a gourmet food shop that became a catering business in Westport, Connecticut. She is the founder and former CEO of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Inc., engaged with television, publishing, electronic commerce, merchandising, and related international partnerships. Stewart had an estimated net worth of $650 million prior to the insider trading scandal. In the early 2000s, Stewart became the focus of headlines, speculation, and a federal investigation concerning her stock trading. She was accused of insider trading after she sold four thousand ImClone System’s shares one day before the firm’s stock price tumbled. The firm’s stock price plummeted as the Food and Drug Administration refused to review ImClone’s cancer drug Erbitux. Even though …show more content…

Although she was banned from being the director of the company for five years, Stewart controlled 50 percent of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Inc. stock and ninety percent of voting stock. It often takes many years for businesspeople to regain trust after corporate misconduct, but Martha Stewart is still a beloved household icon for millions of loyal

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