WASHINGTON — A Louisiana congressman quietly bought at the least six figures value of inventory in Netflix simply weeks earlier than the streaming big introduced its large acquisition cope with Warner Bros.
Rep. Cleo Fields (D-La.) purchased between $500,000 and $1.25 million value of Netflix inventory from Oct. 31 to Nov. 20, House monetary disclosures reveal.
The curiously timed purchases got here simply weeks earlier than the leisure big introduced final Friday that it’s buying Warner Bros and its property, resembling HBO Max, for $82.7 billion in a blockbuster deal.
That monster acquisition deal might nonetheless get foiled by the Justice Department amid Paramount’s campaign to upend the deal and encourage the Trump administration to nix it.
Ironically, Netflix’s inventory has sunk within the time since Fields’ purchases amid uncertainty over the deal and Wall Street’s issues a few bidding battle.
Fields made 5 purchases listed in filings between $100,001 and $250,000 on Oct. 31, Nov. 3 and Nov. 20, monetary disclosures present. The filings don’t present precise quantities.
His Oct. 31 transaction was when Netflix’s shares have been at their highest throughout his purchases, at $111.89 apiece. The firm’s inventory closed out Wednesday at $92.71, marking a roughly 17% dip from the October buy.
The Post reached out to Fields’ workplace for an evidence.
Fields additionally made investments in different tech or electronics corporations throughout that point interval, together with Apple, Google’s mum or dad firm Alphabet, and Nvidia.
So far, he’s the one rep to have disclosed a Netflix inventory buy inside the previous month, data present.
House GOP Conference Chairwoman Lisa McClain (R-Mich.) listed two gross sales of Netflix inventory valued between $1,001 and $15,000 from her 401(Ok) on Oct. 30 and 31. She additionally made one buy of Netflix inventory for a similar vary on Oct. 30, data present.
She is the latest rep to have traded Netflix inventory in addition to Fields.
The Post reached out to her workplace for remark.
Revelations about Fields’ purchases come towards the backdrop of a bipartisan push in Congress to ban members from buying and selling particular person shares — a marketing campaign led by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.)
Luna has been gathering signatures for a discharge petition, which might allow her to safe a vote on a ban by circumventing the standard committee course of with out management’s blessing.
She had been mounting a public strain marketing campaign for a ban on congressional inventory buying and selling for months. So far, she is in need of the wanted 218 votes to drive a vote.
“Political video games have already began to play out behind the scenes. I’m not ready any longer,” Luna stated after rolling out the measure. “A discharge petition is the strongest device we’ve to ensure a vote on behalf of the American individuals and it exists for moments precisely like this.”
