- Bed Bath & Beyond board members were concerned Ryan Cohen was getting insider information.
- Sue Gove, the company’s CEO, said in a deposition that she was concerned about Cohen’s relationship with board members.
- “I didn’t trust him. I didn’t trust what was taking place,” Gove said of Cohen in her testimony.
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Bed Bath & Beyond board members were concerned Ryan Cohen received insider information before making $60 billion selling the company’s stock, according to a deposition by CEO Sue Gove.
“I certainly had questions about that,” said Gove, who was named CEO of Bed Bath & Beyond in October 2022. “Probably most” other board members were also concerned that some on the board were funneling insider information to Cohen, Gove added in her testimony as part of a shareholder lawsuit against the activist investor, who is the current CEO of GameStop.
Ben Rosenzweig, one of the directors on Bed Bath & Beyond’s board, was known to have private contact with Cohen, the deposition said. Their conversations revolved around the personalities of other board members and whether Cohen’s nominees for Bed Bath & Beyond’s board were let in on calls, according to the testimony.
In a conversation with Gove, Rosenzweig indicated he was “representing Ryan,” Gove said. She believed Rosenzweig’s conversations with Cohen were inappropriate due to his role as an “independent director.”
Gove said she did “not completely” trust Rosenzweig or Cohen. In particular, she said she was in a “concerned state” when Rosenzweig suggested he was acting as “Ryan’s agent.”
“I didn’t trust him. I didn’t trust what was taking place,” Gove added of Cohen. “There was a lot of things that had taken place between, you know, him and … and Ben and the whole process that always left me uncomfortable. We were very careful with our conversations with him.”
Rosenweig and other directors, though, have said in their testimonies that they’ve never given insider info to Cohen. Cohen was given non-public information on one occasion but under an agreement that prevented him from trading on it, Rosenzweig said in his deposition.
Lawyers for Cohen and Gove did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
Cohen was accused in a shareholder lawsuit of insider trading and misleading Bed Bath & Beyond investors after making a fortune on the stock in 2022, when he sold his stake in the struggling retailer before the stock tanked. Bed Bath & Beyond filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April 2023.