Comcast CEO Brian L. Roberts has agreed pay a $500,000 civil penalty to “settle charges that he violated premerger reporting and waiting requirements when he acquired Comcast voting securities,” the Justice Department announced Friday. From a DOJ release:
According to the complaint, Roberts failed to comply with the antitrust premerger notification requirements of the HSR Act before acquiring voting securities of Comcast as part of his compensation as chairman and chief executive officer of Comcast beginning on Oct. 22, 2007, which resulted in his holding more than $119.6 million of Comcast stock. On Aug. 25, 2009, Roberts made a corrective filing for Comcast voting securities he had acquired. Although this is the first time Roberts has been charged with an HSR Act violation, previously he had twice made corrective filings regarding transactions that he acknowledged were reportable under the HSR Act, asserting that the failures to file and observe the waiting period were inadvertent.
