A spokesman said the company itself became aware of the activity when it was called by several buy-side money managers who had been shopped a piece of the deal. He says the company checked with its employees who are part of such releases to see if there could have somehow been a leak. He said the company is "confident nothing happened internally." The first thing the company did, he says, was call the SEC to alert them what they had learned. "We're as stymied as anybody and we're looking into this to find out how it transpired, as well," he says.
Could it have been a mere coincidence? Hard to say, but the spokesman acknowledges the timing "is more than interesting."
