Bloomberg
Billionaires sell mega-large blocks of shares after a surge
(Bloomberg) – Stock sales reap a profit for the world’s richest shareholders. Insiders at companies like Amazon.com’s Jeff Bezos and Google co-founder Sergey Brin recently spiked stock sales and benefited from a 14-month bull market. Dumped $ 4 billion, with about half sold through trading plans, according to Bloomberg data. That’s almost as much as the total of $ 30 billion they divested in the second half of 2020. Large shareholders often sell stocks at scheduled intervals, often through pre-arranged trading programs. However, the ongoing rally in the equity markets has made the value of these planned or opportunistic divestments strikingly high. There are several reasons an investor of any size might be motivated to sell. After the pandemic-defying rally, valuations are increasingly under pressure from rising inflation. Investors are concerned that the post-Covid rebound could lead to a tightening of Federal Reserve policies. And the tax hikes proposed by President Joe Biden – including nearly doubling the capital gains rate – have created uncertainty. Bezos, Ellison Whatever the reason, the sales are flooding the market with even more liquidity, the consequences of which will affect philanthropy. The art market, real estate and other niches. Bezos sold $ 6.7 billion worth of Amazon stock this year. Larry Ellison is a relative amount to the richest person in the world, but more than two-thirds the value of the stocks he sold in 2020. Larry Ellison unloaded 7 million Oracle shares last week for total proceeds of $ 552.3 million. Charles Schwab sold shares in his broker of the same name for $ 192 million this year. Brin, who has signaled that he plans to sell up to 250,000 Alphabet Inc. shares, has sold $ 163 million of shares in the past few days, his first sales in more than four years on record. Mark Zuckerberg and his charitable foundation, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, accelerated their sale of Facebook shares in the fall. Zuckerberg or his charity has been selling stocks almost every day since November for a cumulative total of more than $ 1.87 billion. Growing markets have exacerbated the risk of concentration of the high-volume wealth that is typical of many tech billionaires, Thorne Perkin said. President of Papamarkou Wellner Asset Management: “From a portfolio management perspective, it makes sense to distribute it,” he said. Covid Economy Even among the biggest sellers, there are some notable beneficiaries of the Covid Economy. Eric Yuan, founder of Zoom Video Communications, and Ernest Garcia II, used car dealer Carvana Co., have collectively raised more than $ 1.75 billion from stock sales since March 2020, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. George Kurtz, CEO of cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, sold shares worth at least $ 250 million during that period. Zoom founder Yuan – the figurehead of the coronavirus economy in many ways – has seen sales grow this year, with the company’s share price plummeting. In 2020, he typically dumped around 140,000 shares per month through a trading plan that grossed more than $ 350 million over the course of the year. Since March, he’s been selling an average of nearly 200,000 shares a month, grossing him around $ 185 million. He donated more than a third of his stake in the San Jose-based company as part of “typical estate planning practices,” according to a spokesman. A portion of the money he donated to share sale funds for unspecified “humanitarian causes”. (Updates on Charles Schwab’s sales in paragraph seven.) For more articles like this, visit bloomberg.com. Sign up now to stay ahead of the curve with the most trusted company in News Source. © 2021 Bloomberg LP