Will SEC check out Hilton trading?

It's hard to see how they don't. In a half-day session when nothing was happening, shares of the Bev Hills-based hotel company shot up 6.4 percent and volume was more than double the daily average. About six hours after the market closed, and after most analysts and press folk had cleared out for the holiday, the deal was suddenly revealed. A Blackstone spokesman told MarketWatch that the announcement "was certainly not engineered to come out at such a time - on the contrary, we would have preferred to have the news break at a time when coverage would have been more widespread." A spokeswoman for Hilton said the timing of the announcement was linked to a scheduled board meeting on Tuesday. If not for Tuesday morning's stock runup, Hilton shareholders would have had close to a 40 percent premium; as it was, the premium was 32 percent - still substantial but another reminder that insider trading is alive and well.