Panel clears Equifax execs’ selling of shares

ATLANTA — Equifax, the credit report company hacked over the summer exposing the personal information of 145 million Americans, said a special committee has determined that none of the four executives who sold shares at the time did anything wrong.

The high-level executives sold shares worth a combined $1.8 million in the days immediately after the company discovered the breach.

When Equifax went public with the breach in early September, company shares cratered, erasing about $2.35 billion of its market value.

The company revealed that an ongoing cyberattack lasted from mid-May to July. Equifax Inc. said it detected the hack on July 29.

On Aug. 1 and Aug. 2, Equifax Chief Financial Officer John Gamble and three other executives sold a combined $1.8 million in stock.

The company said Friday that a special committee comprised of independent directors, and advised by an independent counsel, found that none of the executives had knowledge of the breach when their trades were made.

The committee’s review included dozens of interviews and the scouring of more than 55,000 documents including emails, text messages, phone logs and other records.

The report Friday is unlikely to relieve pressure on the beleaguered company, which badly bungled the response to the hack.

Investigators will want to know how a breach of this size and scope could have occurred, without the knowledge of some of the company’s highest executives.

Faith in the leadership and the security of private information eroded in the weeks after the attack.