Government says Mark Cuban’s drive to win led him to commit insider trading + MORE Oct 1st

Canada’s financial markets are holding steady on the first day of a partial government shutdown in the U.S., but remain on high alert.

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DALLAS – A government lawyer says the drive to win that helps Mark Cuban succeed in business led the billionaire basketball owner to cheat by using insider information to sell stock in an Internet company.
“Mark Cuban violated the law, and he knew better,” Securities and Exchange Commission lawyer Jan Folena said Tuesday during opening statements to jurors at Cuban’s insider-trading trial.
Cuban’s lawyers are expected to give his side of the case later in the day.
It’s a civil lawsuit; Cuban is not charged with a crime. The SEC wants Cuban to give up $750,000 he saved from selling his shares, plus pay a penalty that could be two or three times that amount.
The SEC alleges that Cuban promised not to trade on information he learned in 2004 from the CEO of Mamma.com, a Canadian search-engine company of which Cuban owned 6 per cent of all shares. The company planned a stock offering that would reduce the value of existing shares. Cuban broke his vow and sold, the agency says…

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SAN FRANCISCO – Billionaire investor Carl Icahn is pressuring Apple to spend $150 billion buying back its own stock, more than double what the company has budgeted.
In a Tuesday statement posted on his Twitter account, Icahn said he laid out his demands during a Monday dinner with Apple CEO Tim Cook.
The meeting came seven weeks after Icahn disclosed that he had acquired a significant stake in Apple Inc. because he believes the maker of the iPhone and iPad has been undervalued by investors worried about the Cupertino, Calif., company’s slowing growth amid tougher competition.
As part of its effort to appease Wall Street, Apple already has pledged to spend $60 billion buying back its stock by the end of 2015.
Apple didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
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