I sense some shenanigans here...
GTA's own CEO was reportedly selling off millions of $$$ in shares since the summer. (Doesnt seem that he had much faith in being able to deliver, or he knew something was up.) Either way, I'd be very surprised if the SEC doesn't investigate.
Who at Apple has been talking up "best product pipeline in 25 years besides Cook?"
How many shares was he retaining as of the last time they had to disclose?
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/mh?s=AAPL+Major+Holders
I'm not saying the GT guy is or is not a crook but if you are inside a company and you can foresee the possibility of your stock going down, you sell. Or you sell to turn paper (stock) into cash as part of harvesting what you've put into your company.
It seems that if Cue is as confident as he is about Apple's Fall prospects, why has HE cashed out of his stock?
Now click into Cook's shares. He's been selling off shares regularly for the last few weeks. Key word "disposition" (look it up if you need to). At the same time, he's been touting "best product pipeline ever". Why is he selling off shares?
Apple is probably not going into bankruptcy court. But if it surprised us all and did, would we not find similar fault with these insider executives cashing out ahead of the event... especially while simultaneously talking "best product pipeline"? Probably not since this is Apple instead of a non-Apple entity. But the point is that selling off shares by executives to personally profit is relatively normal, whether its non-Apple companies or Apple. I wouldn't be so quick to deem this guy "guilty" because he sold shares.
From my perspective, it looks like a small company got throughly locked into a corner by a big company. For whatever reason, the latter decided not to pay some money that small company expected. The small company was completely locked up in terms of exclusivity so if their ONE client did not pay, they could not make up for the lack of payment by selling to anyone else. Thus, boom.
If you shifted the names of the players so the big company was Samsung or Google or Microsoft and the small company was sent into bankruptcy, would be as quick to try & convict the small company as crook, entirely at fault, etc. Or would we at least be able to see the potential of big company socking it to small company and find at least some fault with the former?
Some of us appear to be practically frothing at the idea of Apple stepping in to acquire this little company for pennies on the dollar. If it was Samsung or others would be as excited to see a small company get gobbled up?
Again, not apologizing for GT: all this remarkably negative speculation against them could all prove out to be true. I'd simply offer that we shouldn't convict before we even have the facts. Apple potentially losing a few hundred million dollars is relatively nothing (how much was Beats again?). On the other hand, about a third of that was apparently enough to drive the small company into bankruptcy court.