Company stock - Officers

Proceed at your own risk but when I was working in banking, every time a bank knew it was going to be bought or merged, it opened up stock purchasing to low level employees.  Officer always had the privilege of buying the company stock.  So the Officers were told (insider information, yeppers) when the sale would be announced and what day it would take place.  This gave them time to sell their stock high.  Employees jumped on the band wagon and bought stock (which propped up the stock price while the officers were unloading theirs) only to find out that AFTER the purchase/merger, the stocks were split in half, or thirds, or fourths.  Effectively, the value of a $30 stock dropped down to $6.00.  And then most of the employees were laid off adding insult to injury.  I still have stock in Wachovia fka SouthTrust Bank because it is worth less than $10 (this is twenty years later now) and it would cost me $36 to sell it.