Cable TV anchor Stephanie Ruhle received a private phone and email account from Under Armour boss Kevin Plank through which they communicated in any respect hours, in response to newly unsealed court documents.
The MSNBC host was also sent a secret recording of a conversation that Plank had with one other Under Armour executive concerning the company’s funds, in response to court papers cited by The Wall Street Journal.
In 2019, The Journal was the primary to report details of the unusually close relationship between Ruhle, who was then a financial news anchor with Bloomberg Television, and Plank, the 51-year-old billionaire who made his fortune after founding the Baltimore-based sports apparel giant.
The newest details concerning the nature of the connection between Plank and Ruhle emerged in unsealed court documents linked to a lawsuit filed by Under Armour shareholders against Bloomberg, where Ruhle worked from 2011 to 2016 before moving to Comcast-owned MSNBC.
During a deposition earlier this yr, Plank, who stepped down as Under Armour CEO in 2019 though he stays the corporate’s executive chairman, was asked to explain the character of his relationship with Ruhle.
“She’s a confidant,” he said.
“I might give her counsel on her profession and he or she would give me counsel on things I used to be coping with that were either banking or media or human nature in relation.”
In her deposition, Ruhle acknowledged receiving a phone from Plank that was separate from her personal device in addition to her work phone, in response to The Journal.
She also said in her deposition that she took quite a few trips with Plank on a private jet.
“We were friends and I covered his company,” Ruhle said within the deposition.
When asked if she was flying with Plank in her capability as a friend or as a journalist, Ruhle said within the deposition: “I used to be flying on his plane as myself, Stephanie Ruhle. I’m not likely in a category one or the opposite.”
Ruhle, who worked as an executive at Deutsche Bank before transitioning to a profession in journalism in 2011, was known to take trips with Plank on a private jet and even gave him public relations advice while she was anchor at Bloomberg, in response to the shareholders’ lawsuit against the media company.
The close ties between the 2, each of whom are married, sparked speculation amongst Under Armour executives that they were having an affair, but an organization spokesperson denied this, saying that they were friends.
“As we’ve said, Mr. Plank has utilized outside advisors and that’s what these documents show,” an Under Armour spokesperson told The Journal.
“None of the data was used improperly.”
An MSNBC spokesperson declined to comment.
The Post has sought comment from Under Armour and Bloomberg News.
The shareholders allege that Plank and other executives at Under Amour artificially inflated the corporate’s share price regardless that they knew that sales were weaker than the worth of the stock indicated.
The plaintiffs within the case are looking for to force Bloomberg to show over Ruhle’s emails, but a federal judge in Manhattan denied the request, saying that Ruhle’s function as a journalist rendered those communications privileged, The Journal reported.
Under Armour has called the claims “meritless and are being defended vigorously.”
In May 2021, Under Armour agreed to pay $9 million to the Securities and Exchange Commission to settle claims that it misled investors about its revenue growth.
The SEC found that Under Armour did not confide in investors that it employed a sales tactic to speed up or “pull forward” a complete of $408 million in existing orders within the second half of 2015 after a warm winter began to harm sales of the corporate’s higher-priced cold weather apparel that customers had requested be shipped in future quarters.
With Post Wires