Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) insiders have been taking advantage of their company’s rising stock price by selling off their stock. This time, it’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg, although he’s not selling, but rather, transferring his shares from one class to another and giving some away.
Zuckerberg swaps Facebook stock classes
According to a regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Zuckerberg’s trust, called the Mark Zuckerberg Trust, converted almost 4 million of its Class B shares of Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) into Class A shares.
The filing indicates that after the conversion, the trust gave 1.333 million shares apiece to The Mark Zuckerberg 2014 GRAT No. 2 and The Mark Zuckerberg 2014 GRAT No. 3. The transactions are dated May 8, and each of those two funds hold 1.333 million Class A shares of Facebook. That left the Mark Zuckerberg Trust with just 241 shares of the social network.
The conversion is an interesting one because it loosens Zuckerberg’s grip over the company he founded. Class B shares of Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) carry a lot more voting rights than Class A. An article in The New Yorker from May 2012 indicates that after the social network’s initial public offering, Zuckerberg had 18% of the social network but controlled 57% of the voting shares, meaning he was in complete control of the company he founded.
On May 6, Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) Chief Product Officer Christopher Cox sold off 5,434 shares of the social network. On the same day, Chief Financial Officer David Ebersman exercised stock options to shuffle around 13,742 shares of Class B stock. Ebersman and Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg have been selling and moving around shares of the social network for months now. Vice President David Fischer also sold some shares this month, unloading 36,000 of them on May 8.
Shares of Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) remained roughly flat in afternoon trading today after a strong finish on Monday.
