[piva00]

> Also, the CEO purchased a whole bunch of shares before the report and again after the report. He is probably well positioned to know GE fairly well. It's not a necessary move on his part but it does signal some confidence in GE.

Couldn't this be seen as a PR move to do damage mitigation and earn market confidence? As you mentioned that it's an opaque company accounting-wise it'd be hard to evaluate this objectively but the CEO of a possibly fraudulent company buying stocks to earn the market confidence seems to be a very low price to avoid the possible side-effects if the allegations are true.

[hangonhn]

It's totally a PR move but it certainly does increase his exposure to the fortunes of GE. His ability to sell his shares are limited by his position as CEO. I also imagine that if the frauds were real and gone on for as long as the report states, the first thing a new CEO would do is to expose them because otherwise he will be on the hook for the frauds committed by his predecessors. (Culp was a successful CEO at a very successful company before taking the helm of GE)