Uh-oh.
The documents state Funcom is charged with infringement of the Securities Trading Act between Aug. 2011 and July 2012 for allegedly shared false financial information pertaining to The Secret World with the market. Funcom is also being charged for failing to maintain proper financial records during the game’s launch and following months.
News reports state Funcom is cooperating fully and employees have been sent home as the investigation continues.
The RPS story says that they’ve been reinstated to the stock exchange by cooperating with investigators…but this is still not a good sign.
It does make it sound as if the crew running TSW from North Carolina remains unaffected. Relatively, I suppose.
From what I can tell, this investigation may all be a continuation of what happened with a guy named Tronde Arne As. He was the CEO of Funcom who stepped down the day before the launch of Secret World in 2012…and dumped a ton of stock while doing so. The Norwegian version of the SEC began investigating, and noticed a pattern of stock price fluctuations that could have been from illegal manipulations of that price in the market.
Given the turnover in upper level management at Funcom (and what is likely an antagonistic attitude towards Arne As by current upper management) it’s unsurprising that they’re fully cooperating. I suppose the company’s survival rather depends upon those currently running the show being found innocent of engaging in the insider trading the former CEO has been accused of.
Ninja edit. Very slick, Diamon. I’m watching you…;)
This is the site sourced in the RPS story:
Sadly, it’s in Norwegian, but Google translate paints a picture both ominous and hopeful. Story mentions investigators taking boxes of documents out…(which is the ominous) as well as the story mentioning the reinstatement at some weird Norwegian time of “24:30”. What the heck time is 24:30?
NM–it’s 12:30 pm.
LOL.
Just reading through the reports, it seems this is all part of the original investigation started in 2012 when Trond Aas sold a bunch of his stock just before The Secret World tanked.
Aww… I thought I’d finally figured out the secret to scandinavian country prosperity on both social and economic fronts: They get more hours in the day than the rest of us!
I hope to Christ this doesn’t mean TSW is going to be in trouble. I don’t think I could bear another MMO I’ve loved being canned (after CoH and now Vanguard) :(
(All in the context of #firstworldproblems of course :) )
It’ll be sold to SoE where all MMORGS go to die LOL.
