NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - Chief executives now need to be more careful with how they manage their personal stock portfolios, according to a report published Tuesday.

The Wall Street Journal cited a recent case of former telecommunication chief executive Clark McLeod, who was found liable for improper stock trading for receiving shares of companies making an initial public offering in his personal brokerage account.

In the case, a New York state court said the chief executive was liable because he received the shares from a brokerage, Citigroup's Salomon Smith Barney, with whom his firm did business and didn't disclose that information to his company's board, according to the Journal.

The Journal said New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer is seeking the return of more than $10 million in profits McLeod made between 1997 and 2000 from trading undisclosed IPOs. During that time, McLeod's firm paid Salomon more than $77 million in investment banking fees, according to the report.

Chief executives "wouldn't accept cash, they wouldn't accept a car -- they shouldn't be able to accept hot IPOs," Andrew Lorin, enforcement-section chief in the attorney general's office who handled the case, told the Journal.

A lawyer for McLeod told the Journal that Salomon handled his client's IPO a year before the period in question and that they would appeal the ruling.

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