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Ballmer Sells Part of his Stake in Microsoft

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the taking-the-money-and-sticking-around dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The Financial Times reports that Steve Ballmer has sold part of his MS shares (my early morning math isn't very good, it seems a shade under 10%). Short of cash? Parking tickets? Or the start of a strategy to get rid of it all without causing too much upset in one go? No idea, but speculation is sure to be with us for a while."

8 of 319 comments (clear)

  1. long term mandatory growth problems by MarkWatson · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Earlier this year, a fairly high ranked Microsoft executive told me the Microsoft must grow at a fast pace to keep stock options valuable. I think the phrase he used was "grow another Disney each year".

    It seems odd to me that a company that has so much cash and such high profit margins requires mandatory fast growth, but then I am a humble programmer, not a financial guy :-)

    The whole idea goes against my basic philosophy of "take what you need and leave some for others". Not to go off on a huge tangent, but in the western world, greed seems to far outweigh issues like building an enjoyable and productive career. As Josepgh Campbell used to say "follow your bliss"...

    That said, Balmer probably has some fun with Microsoft :-)

    -Mark

    1. Re:long term mandatory growth problems by Planesdragon · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Any publicly listed company has a DUTY to their shareholders to increase the shareholders investments as rapidly as possible.

      (IANAL-RU?)

      CEOs don't have a duty to increase the stock's value as quickly as possible. They just have a fiduciary duty to provide a reasonable ROI. This can take the form of increased stock price or healthy dividends, or even simply preserving the stock price in a downward economy.

      While a CEO needs to be compelled to act in the interest of all stockholders, there is no reason to add qualifiers to that.

  2. Stock option values by John3 · · Score: 4, Interesting
    You're right, stock options are a big part of compensation at M$. I'm sure that their employees are getting impacted by the reduced value of their stock due to the market conditions. Other companies are seeing the same problem, especially compaines like Wal$Mart and Home Despot that rely on stock options to keep low paid store managers and staff happy (or complacent...can you really be happy working at a Big Box store?).


    That being said, I don't think Ballmer falls under the category of "low paid". :-)

    --
    "We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
  3. Re:This would be a good time to buy MS stock by jkabbe · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Of course Ballmer wants to diversify. Microsoft stock isn't going anywhere fast (down or up). They are a large company that won't be doubling their revenue any time soon. Why have all your wealth in a stock that isn't likely to go up very much? Of course he can't say that so he says "diversify my portfolio"

  4. Re:not only the president.... by RoLi · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Sorry for replying to my own post, but I'd like to add:

    Ballmer now sold 40 Million shares, compared to that Bill Gates sold 400 Million or about 40% of his shares in the last years.

    If Gates and Ballmer don't know where MSFT-stock is headed, who does?

  5. Re:This is nothing new by Daniel+Phillips · · Score: 5, Interesting

    All of the top brass at Microsoft regularly sell off parts of their shares. Gates has been doing it for years, at a relatively regular pace.

    The thing is, most of the upper management of Microsoft that have been with the company from early on have most of their wealth in Microsoft shares. The problem is that they have to sell it off slowly or they wouldn't manage to get a decent price for it.

    What's interesting about this particular sale is the timing of it (never mind that it's one of the largest insider stock sales ever). With MS stock price so low and the MS/SCO suit going so well, you'd think he'd see it as a good time to buy.

    Diversifying is one thing, selling at a stupidly low price is quite another. So naturally enough, we're all wondering what Steve knows that we don't.

    --
    Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
  6. Re:This would be a good time to buy MS stock by RoLi · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Like it or not, Microsoft is doing fine. They have good profits for the forseeable future.

    Like it or not, Microsoft is overpriced. If I would take Microsoft's market capitalization (259 billion $) and put the money into low risk investments at 5% interest, I would make 259 * 0.05 = 12.95 billion in profits per year.

    Microsoft makes only about 10 billion in profits, so it's severly overpriced, especially considering the fact that stocks are very risky.

    Microsoft has just recently raised licensing costs (through Licensing 6.0) but does on the other hand give huge discounts to all major customers if they may go to Linux. I'd say that in the future there is not much room anymore to bleed their customers.

  7. Re:not only the president.... by sinan · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Actually Bill Gates used to own almost 50% as AFAIR. Now he holds about 11% ...

    Which means he has gotten rid of almost 80% of his holdings.

    Yahoo -> MSFT -> insider , looking at last year show an almost scary mass exodus...