Business Week Fires an Editor : Says Broadcaster’s Trading Violated Ethics

Business Week said today it fired its broadcast editor for violating the magazine’s code of ethics and possibly trading on advance knowledge of stocks mentioned in issues before they hit the newsstands.

S. G. (Rudy) Ruderman, who had broadcast market and business news for Business Week since 1981, failed to disclose to the magazine “all the (stock) trades he made and the full extent of his holdings” in accordance with the ethics code, magazine spokeswoman Mary McGeachy said.

McGraw-Hill Inc., Business Week’s publisher, learned late Thursday from the New York Stock Exchange’s surveillance unit that Ruderman “may have made four or five trades in 1988 involving stocks mentioned in the magazine’s ‘Inside Wall Street’ column,” McGeachy said.

Ruderman does not report, write or edit stories for Business Week, but he broadcasts a business news report several times a day over Group W radio stations from the magazine’s office in midtown Manhattan.

Magazine officials had said since the probe into unusual, pre-publication trading in stocks mentioned in Business Week was made public last month that editorial employees were not involved.

Much attention in the scandal has focused on the four plants where the magazine is printed.