Here’s a link to Google’s SEC form 8-K filing, laying out Page and Brin’s joint stock sale plan, filed Friday.
To give a sense of perspective, before the filing, Page and Brin together held approximately 54.6% of the voting shares of Google stock. If they follow the plan and sell all eligible shares, they will still, collectively, own approximately 52% of the voting shares.
That might seem insignificant. But wait.
As I read it (and the wording is a bit cryptic, so I could be off here), the plan calls for Page and Brin to sell, jointly, four million shares of stock. Four million shares. At Friday’s close of $549.01, that’s $2.2 billion. That is a huge amount of money.
One takeaway from all this is the massive amount of money a company like Google represents. Page and Brin are not ceding control of Google (they will still, together, own more than 50% of the voting shares). This is about diversifying their holdings:
These pre-arranged stock trading plans were adopted in order to allow Larry and Sergey to sell a portion of their Google stock over time as part of their long-term strategies for individual asset diversification and liquidity. The stock transactions pursuant to these plans will be disclosed publicly through Form 4 and Form 144 filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Using these plans, they will diversify their investment portfolios and spread stock trades out over an extended period of time to reduce market impact. Because these plans were established well in advance of any trade being made pursuant to them, they also help avoid concerns about whether these officers had material, non-public information when they made a decision to sell their stock.
Interesting.
That’s a big chunk for change for the rest of us but a very very small diversification for them. This sort of pre-arrangement is really more for the appearance of prevention of insider trading. Clearly they are both on the path to Gates-like wealth. Interesting tho, that Jobs never had so much control of Apple or such a level of wealth. And yet … look at how Apple (eventually) turned out.
Actually it represents 10% of their Google holdings. That is actually a very big deal.
Steve Ballmer (iirc) is the largest single sharehold (person) of MS Stock. I think Ballmer is worth about $12B or so (maybe double?) and he just bought the LA Clippers for a billllllllllllllion dollars.
When Jobs resigned (or was fired) from Apple in 1985, he sold all but one share. I have no idea what Jobs and Wozniak had before … I know Woz gave away some of his shares. Clearly Jobs did not have enough control to keep hsi job, though that turned out to be a very good thing.
Those share sales allowed Jobs to acquire Pixar and build NeXT … maybe some day Larry and Sergey will that successful one day – though who knows.
I think Jobs acquired the bulk of his current (or former) wealth by selling Pixar to Disney (for $7B?). Ironically (or maybe not) George Lucas just sold Lucas Film, etc… to Disney for about $4B or so …
Yeah, but they may need to buy a house or small boat!
10% is hardly meaningful diversification.
Pre-arrangement is not for the appearance, but an SEC requirement for insiders.