SEC v. Mark Cuban: Introduction

The Race to the Bottom will be covering the SEC charges against Mark Cuban, the billionaire entrepreneur. Cuban is famous for being the charismatic owner of the Dallas Mavericks, the NBA team he has owned since 2000, and his recent attempt at purchasing the Chicago Cubs.

Cuban started his career by developing MicroSolutions, a company involved in system integrations and software reselling. After selling MicroSolutions for $6 million to CompuServe, Cuban started Broadcast.com, a company involved in web broadcasting of college basketball games. In 1999, Cuban became a billionaire when Yahoo! purchased Broadcast.com for $5.9 billion in Yahoo! stock. Since then, among other ventures, Cuban has dipped his hand into the entertainment industry, purchasing Landmark Theaters and creating HDNet, the first high-definition satellite television network.

In 2004, Cuban sold 600,000 shares in the search engine Mamma.com Inc. (totaling a 6.3% stake) after learning about the company’s plans for private financing. The SEC has filed a complaint stating the Mavericks owner knew the information was confidential, but decided to trade based on that information to avoid a potential $750,000 loss.

The primary sources for the Mark Cuban trial are available at the DU Corporate Governance website.