We have quite a surprising bombshell that seems to have been happening in the periphery of the Microsoft-Activision deal.
A Twitter account named unusual_whales made a claim that a US Dem politician, Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton, sold his shares of Activision Blizzard King on June 13, 2023, the same day that the FTC filed a TRO in federal court to block the deal.
This is the same case under San Francisco California District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley where the FTC is also seeking a preliminary injunction, that would effectively stop the deal from going through. Judge Corley ended those hearings last month and is still working on that decision to block the deal or not.
However, if Rep. Moulton did sell his shares of Activision knowing that the deal would get blocked that day, that would be the definition of insider trading. Rep. Moulton may be under violation of the STOCK Act.
Unfortunately for Rep. Moulton, he already has a track record of doing this exact same thing. A Washington Examiner report from April of this year revealed that Rep. Moulton’s wife already sold $ 100,000 of Activision shares in September 2022, and did not disclose this until January of this year. Moulton paid a fee because of this late disclosure.
Regarding this latest incident, Rep. Moulton’s disclosure can be tracked in the official website for the Clerk of the House of Representatives. It was filed in July 7, 2023, and has the document ID 20023219. For your convenience, we have taken a screenshot of the filing below.
As you can see in the filing, Rep. Moulton sold more shares of Activision on June 13, 2023, and the amount is somewhere between $ 100,000 to $ 250,000. This time, his filing did meet the deadline for disclosing such transactions under the STOCK Act, but it’s obviously not a good look.
While we can’t speak to whether Rep. Moulton could have violated other parts of the STOCK Act, it’s clear that he is in a privileged position to act on confidential information.
It’s reasonable to assume that he and his wife purchased stock in Activision Blizzard far before this, simply because the video game industry makes for good investments. ZeniMax once had Donald Trump’s brother, the late Robert Trump, in their board of directors because of his investment in their company.
There probably isn’t much more in this story than some unsavory business practices from a single politician. But it does make one wonder how much longer the Microsoft Activision deal will remain in limbo. Regulators may be right to investigate and review this deal, but this extended delay enabled this behavior.
We now have less than two weeks to go before the July 18 deadline set by Microsoft and Activision themselves to close the deal. Between then and now, Judge Corley could either grant the FTC’s injunction, effectively blocking the deal completely, or take Microsoft and Activision’s side, enabling them to complete the deal on that same day or soon after.
