He broke news of the insider trading guilty plea of former ImClone CEO Sam Waksal; SEC fraud charges against WorldCom; the plan to dissolve accounting firm Arthur Andersen; Wall Street analyst Jack Grubman's conflict of interest settlement; the suicide of former Enron executive Cliff Baxter; and details of the global settlement between tobacco companies and the states.
The decisions on approval will often make or break a small company's stock price (e.g., Martha Stewart and Imclone), so the markets closely watch CDER's decisions.
Martha Stewart, the founder of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (Waksal had dated Stewart's daughter) also became embroiled in the scandal after it emerged that she sold about $230,000 in ImClone shares on December 27, just a day before the announcement of FDA decision.
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Ultimately a new clinical trial and FDA filing prepared by Imclone's partner Merck KGaA ("German Merck," not to be confused with the US company of similar name) resulted in an FDA approval of Erbitux in 2004 for use in colon cancer.