Disclosure Questions at Tyco

Editor's Note: Herb Greenberg's column runs exclusively on RealMoney.com; this is a special free look at his column. For a free trial subscription to RealMoney.com, click here. This article was published Jan. 23 on RealMoney.

There's nothing wrong with CEOs and CFOs investing in other companies, but when they don't disclose the outside ventures, that raises questions about what else they may not be disclosing.

Which brings us to Tyco , whose CEO Dennis Kozlowski and CFO Mark Swartz have been quietly involved with another company without ever telling Tyco investors.

The company in question, Global Technology Marketing International, better known as TargitMail, is in the business of email marketing. It was private until May 2001, when it was bought by GourmetMarket.com, a publicly traded company that owned and operated a "culinary e-commerce site" that decided to shift gears and go into the email marketing business. Shortly thereafter, GourmetMarket.com changed its name to TargitInteractive (TGIT Quote), and Kozlowski and Swartz -- TargitMail's principal shareholders -- wound up owning more than half the stock in TargitInteractive. ...