Equifax directors sold shares after company discovered data breach

Amid one of the biggest data breaches in US history, it has emerged that three Equifax senior executives sold almost $1.8m in shares in the days after the credit reporting agency discovered a hack which could have compromised the data of 143 million American customers.

But the company claimed the three did not know about the incident at the time of selling.

Equifax released a statement late on Thursday US time, saying it discovered a data breach on 29 July, with intruders potentially having access to names, dates of birth, addresses, driving licence numbers, Social Security numbers and even some credit card numbers.

Regulatory documents reported by Bloomberg showed that three days after Equifax discovered the breach, chief financial officer John Gamble and president of US information solutions Joseph Loughlan sold stock worth $0.95m and $0.58m respectively.

On 2 August, the company’s president of workforce solutions Rodolfo Ploder sold $0.25m of his stock.

Bloomberg noted that none of the filings listed the transactions as being part of any scheduled trading plans.

According to a statement from the company, the three “sold a small percentage of their Equifax shares” and “had no knowledge that an intrusion had occurred at that time”.

Equifax shares finished the US session up 0.94% on Thursday before the breach was revealed, but fell 13.12% in after-hours trading.

It is understood the breach - which, at 143 million identities, would be one of the largest data breaches in world history - only affected US customers.

Equifax is one of the three credit reporting agencies operating in the UK, alongside Experian and CallCredit.