Washington – Sen. Bill Frist offered an explanation Wednesday for the fortuitous timing of the sale in June of his stake in HCA, the giant hospital company that his family founded, as its shares reached a peak and began a steep slide.
An aide to Frist, Senate majority leader and brother of the HCA chairman emeritus, disclosed the sale Monday in an interview with Congressional Quarterly.
The senator’s spokesman, Bob Stevenson, said Wednesday that Frist “made a conscious decision to divest himself of all HCA assets” so he could pursue an ambitious agenda of health-care legislation free of any appearance of self-interest.
Since joining the Senate, Frist had been dogged by accusations about conflicts of interest from his HCA holdings, including “no fewer than 19 instances” of articles or other public accusations, Stevenson said.
Frist, who has said he will not run for another term, is widely considered to be weighing a presidential bid. That may give him another incentive to put some distance between himself and the company.
“Good fortune, isn’t it?” professor John Coffee, an authority on securities law at Columbia, asked.
Coffee said such well-timed sales in the families of top executives were a red flag of possible insider trading and often drew regulatory inquiries, although just a small fraction of such instances lead to formal investigations.