Ballmer Sells Part of his Stake in Microsoft

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."

Comments

Re:long term mandatory growth problems

[Planesdragon]

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.

Re:This is nothing new

[Daniel Phillips]

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.