Example: Preparation for a Board Meeting: 3

On the one hand, publicly listed companies have to carefully protect share price sensitive information (alas: insider information), such as quarterly results. On the other hand, such companies have to ensure that - once published - financial information is widely available to everyone at the same point of time. -- Usually quarterly results are prepared a couple of weeks prior to the announcement date. Hence, senior management and few selected individuals in the financial department will already know the results, but also unauthorised individuals (such as in the IT department, backoff staff) will have - direct or indirect - access to the relevant information. Besides, it is common that also several company advisors will have access to this sensitive information prior to public distribution, such as an outside PR or IR firm preparing slide shows, press conferences and similar.