Morgan 'encouraged' columnists to buy shares they tipped
Former Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan “encouraged” his City Slickers columnists to buy the shares they were tipping, a court heard today.
He told the journalists, who have been accused of “manipulating” the market, that writing about stock while not trading themselves was like learning to drive from a manual.
James Hipwell told London’s Southwark Crown Court he made “no secret” he was purchasing holdings he then backed in the paper.
“I was very open about it,” he insisted.
His QC, Philip Hackett, then enquired: “Did Mr Morgan to your knowledge have any awareness you were buying shares at or around the time of the tips?”
“Yes, he did,” the writer replied.
“I was encouraged to do so by him.
“He said if we were in the business of tipping shares he was happy for us to trade and even used the analogy along the lines of you would not learn to drive from somebody who had never been in a car. You would not learn from a manual.”
He told jurors the newspaper chief then added: “So if you are in the market and you are active and you are tipping shares I’m quite happy for you to trade.”
During further questioning, Hipwell explained Mr Morgan has seen the City Slickers column as a way of “livening up” the Daily Mirror’s business coverage.
The then-editor – who is said to have once bought a €100,000 share tranche the day before they were tipped in the paper – was “very interested” in the workings of the square mile.
“He was always coming over and chatting to us about the stories that we were intending to write. He took a very great interest in what we were doing and he was very supportive.”
The journalist explained another frequent visitor to the Slickers desk was Martin Cruddace, an in-house lawyer with particular responsibility for the column.
“He used to come over to the desk quite a lot,” Hipwell maintained.
“He checked share prices of the shares he owned, talked to us about the share market, where we thought it was going, etc, etc.”
Hipwell, 39, of Caledonian Road, Holloway, north London, and private investor Terry Shepherd, 36, of Kinglea, Leatherhead, Surrey, each deny conspiring ith column co-author Anil Bhoyrul to “create a misleading impression as to the value of investments between August 1 1999 and February 29 2000.”
Bhoyrul, 38, of Wood Road, Sutton, Surrey, is not on trial.
