(Bloomberg) – A lawmaker calls for an investigation into a $ 54.2 million purchase of Oshkosh Corp shares after hours, a day before the company won a major contract to build trucks for the U.S. Postal Service .
The 524,400 share transaction is a few days longer than the Oshkosh trading volume. The block itself accounts for nearly 1% of the company’s publicly available shares and 74% of the company’s average 20-day volume, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Oshkosh shares rose to 16% the next day, February 23, and have risen further since then. The stake would be worth $ 59.6 million at the closing price of $ 113.65 on Friday, or more than $ 5 million above the purchase price. The parties involved in the trade could not be determined.
“It definitely stinks and needs to be looked at at the highest levels,” Representative Tim Ryan, an Ohio Democrat who is fighting the award to Oshkosh, said in an interview. ‘If it’s not suspicious, I do not know what it is. Someone clearly knew something. ”
Ryan said he would ask the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate. Representatives of the agency did not immediately respond to an email request after normal office hours.
The postal service awarded the military truck manufacturer in Wisconsin a ten-year contract for as much as 165,000 vehicles worth as much as $ 6 billion.
Ryan supports the lost bid of Workhorse Group Inc., which has a 10% stake in Lordstown Motors Corp. has, which manufactures electric vehicles in a factory in Ryan’s congressional district.
An Oshkosh representative did not respond to a request for comment and email.
The move to award Oshkosh the contract stunned Wall Street analysts who predicted that Workhorse’s proposal to make electric trucks would win at least part of the order. Workhorse is considering challenging the award.
Trading outside normal market hours can have a significant impact on stock prices because market activity is thinner.
Ryan, who said he was drafting a letter to the SEC, along with Ohio Democrats Marcy Kaptur and Senator Sherrod Brown, asked the Biden government to suspend and review the Postal Service grant to Oshkosh.
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