Murray Energy sues Bloomberg over information leak

Murray Energy Corp. is suing Bloomberg LP over a claim that a Bloomberg Business report published in August was part of a “conspiracy to breach [a] confidentiality agreement” and publicized trade secret information about the coal miner, reports Taylor Kuykendall of SNL Financial.

Kuykendall writes, “The article is related to a report in which Bloomberg claimed that ‘two people with knowledge of the matter’ reported that Murray had lowered its earnings outlook for 2015 during a presentation to bondholders. An attached e-mail exhibit to the complaint shows that Murray Energy’s assistant general counsel and media director, Gary Broadbent, warned Sridhar Natarajan, one of two authors bylined on the report, that the company urged Bloomberg to not publish the information and would consider such a ‘breach of valid, binding confidentiality agreements’ between Murray and its sources.

“‘All of Murray Energy Corp.’s confidential information is proprietary and strictly confidential. Bloomberg was repeatedly made aware of this fact prior to publication and, nevertheless, they decided to publish it via an online article,’ Murray Energy said in a statement to SNL Energy, adding that the company intends to ‘recover the full extent of our financial damages.’

“According to the report, Murray uploaded a private and confidential investor package to a secure data site for a private and confidential teleconference with public debt holders. According to the complaint, the presentation included information about Murray Energy, a privately-held company, such as its adjusted EBITDA, capital expenditures, production, sales volume, cost of sales, price realizations, liquidity and/or its cash reserves.”

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