NorthWest Biotherapeutics Inc (NWBO)

[biosectinvestor]

You first limit your post with a qualifier, which a novice might not pick up "in securities law". There are reasons why companies customarily go into quiet periods, and not all of them either 1) are directly always applicable to a specific provision of securities law, though they have good reasons for customarily being observed; and 2) while the IPO context is one context, there are other contexts where a quiet period is customarily observed for purposes of securities law potential for liability, including selective disclosure, and that is approximately the 30 days prior to all financial filings.

Additionally, companies go silent with regard to anticipated major mergers, or similar events, restructuring or layoffs, and yes, announcing major events like, for instance, the release of clinical trial data, which requires incredible care so that results are reviewed by all the relevant stakeholders with appropriate thoroughness and thoughtfulness. One reason to do that, and to have a peer-reviewed article in the works, is to provide as comprehensive a review as possible so that all kinds of misinformation and disinformation do not become the norm with every clinical trial release. A thorough and careful review and appropriately careful initial presentation of data are important to confirm the scientific nature of the project, to establish a reasonable consensus amongst respected experts. Additionally, the regulatory agencies may prefer to see the data and engage with it ahead of release, at times, and that may be the preferable approach of all of the true stakeholders. In this era, such an approach may be especially important when there are spoilers and interests with very deep financial interests in distributing disinformation and misinformation that can undermine their potential rivals.

So there are many reasons and principles that can guide a company to take an appropriately protective quiet period that protects the interests of the company and all of its stakeholders, including shareholders, despite it not being an explicit legal requirement. And, not having done so, it can still become a legal issue, if they did not take appropriate care to do the above, despite indications that there could be risks in not doing so. I think such disregard for risks could lead to different kinds of corporate liabilities and problems that have a legal impact, even though it's not explicitly in a rule that they must stay quiet in a particularly enunciated context. Laws and liabilities do not always come with broad and exact enunciations of contexts from whence legal problems might arise.