U.S. authorities, in response to a recently published Wall Street Journal article, are investigating certain stock sales made by several corporate executives, the newspaper reported, citing a person familiar with the matter.

Authorities are probing whether several executives benefited from share sales that occurred before bad news about their companies hit the market, sparing them declines in the value of their holdings, the Journal said.

The Manhattan U.S. attorney's office, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) are all probing various aspects of executives' share sales that were reported by the Journal on Nov. 28, according to the paper.

An SEC spokesman declined to comment to the Journal. The SEC, FBI and Manhattan U.S. attorney's office could not be reached immediately for comment by Reuters outside regular U.S. business hours.