MarketWatch.com's Calandra to pay $545,000 fine in biz news scandal

Thom Calandra agreed to pay $545,000 Monday to settle charges he used his old newsletter at MarketWatch.com to pump stocks he owned before selling them, the Securities and Exchange Commission said.

Calandra resigned from the popular financial news Web site last January amid allegations that the SEC was looking into his trading activity. Calandra was a senior columnist and a founding editor of MarketWatch.

....Regulators contend he wrote favorable stories about 23 small-cap stocks he owned and then sold the stocks after the shares rose in value.

....The SEC also alleged the columnist didn't disclose that he had received compensation from a stock promoter affiliated with two Canadian mining companies, Goldmaraca and IMC Ventures, he had touted in the newsletter. Calandra received heavily discounted shares in the two companies, which he "later sold at a substantial profit."

Calandra, who was MarketWatch's first editor-in-chief, began publishing the newsletter in March 2003 at a $299 annual fee. At its peak, the product had 6,500 subscribers.

In settling with the SEC, Calandra agreed to pay a $125,000 fine and give back $416,109 in trading profits. In one stock alone, Pacific Minerals, the SEC contends Calandra generated $53,000 in illegal profits.

....MarketWatch is in the process of being acquired by Dow Jones for about half-a-billion dollars.

...read it all: Columnist Calandra in $540,000 SEC Settlement, TheStreet.com, 10 January 2005