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Al Gore Sells $29.5 Million In Apple Stock (appleinsider.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from AppleInsider: A U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Friday reveals Apple board member Al Gore this week sold 215,437 shares of Apple stock (APPL) worth about $29.5 million. Gore's stock sale, which was accomplished in multiple trades ranging from $136.4 to $137.12 on Wednesday, nearly matches a $29.6 million purchase of Apple shares made in 2013. When Gore bought the stock batch more than four years ago, he exercised Apple's director stock option to acquire 59,000 shares at a price of about $7.48 per share, costing him approximately $441,000. This was pre-split AAPL, so shares were valued at $502.68 each. Following today's sale, Gore owns 230,137 shares of Apple stock worth $31.5 million at the end of trading on Friday.

28 of 198 comments (clear)

  1. That's a lot . . . by PeeAitchPee · · Score: 4, Funny

    . . . of carbon credits!

  2. Being on a board of directors is good work by Cytotoxic · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That's good work if you can get it. A couple of hours per quarter, and the company usually flies you in and puts you up in swanky digs and takes you out for expensive dinners.

    And for the effort he managed to pull in some $60+ million in bonus incentives. Nice.

    Although, given his history as a politician who complained of many things of "the rich", including CEOs making exorbitant salaries and bonuses..... Doesn't that make this..... I dunno, ironic seems inadequate.

    Still, if you are looking for someone to sit on your board, I'll be happy to do it at half that rate!

    1. Re:Being on a board of directors is good work by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      given his history as a politician who complained of many things of "the rich", including CEOs making exorbitant salaries and bonuses

      They're called Limousine Liberals for a reason.

    2. Re:Being on a board of directors is good work by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 3, Funny

      Still, if you are looking for someone to sit on your board, I'll be happy to do it at half that rate!

      And I will do it for half your rate.

      And I have 34 slashdot achievements, 5 more than the competitor's who is quoting double my price.

      --
      sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
    3. Re:Being on a board of directors is good work by CanadianMacFan · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I'd have to pass on the opportunity. There's no way I could sit on the board and quietly agree with the rest of them that Tim Cook is doing a great job. There are a number of problems that need addressing and I couldn't keep quiet about them, no matter how good the money was.

    4. Re:Being on a board of directors is good work by Gavagai80 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Who could be better qualified to complain about the rich than one of them? If a poor person complains about the rich, they're just jealous.

      --
      This space intentionally left blank
  3. Unjust by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Director stock options are another unjust method of the one percent to take from everyone else while adding no value.

    1. Re:Unjust by darthsilun · · Score: 4, Informative

      Board Members are not employees.

    2. Re:Unjust by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 4, Interesting

      In some cases it amounts to the appointed caretakers robbing the owners (shareholders). Sometimes the major shareholders are pension funds and large institutional investors and the like, being run by the same type of guys who do not mind awarding their pals such sums; it comes out of their clients' pockets so who cares. Sometimes they even sit on each other's Renumeration Boards (committees tasked with setting "fair" wages for C-levels and non-executive officers). I;ve seen one of those in action and it really amounted to one hand washing the other, to the point where even institutional investors put "overly generous exec renumeration" in their analysis of the company.

      --
      If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
    3. Re:Unjust by darthsilun · · Score: 3, Insightful

      s/Al Gore is not.../I think it's safe to say Al Gore is not.../

      And as an Apple shareholder – indirectly through mutual funds in my 401k – I do object to sweetheart deals for selected individuals that rob me and other shareholders of the profits from our investments in the companies that do this..

  4. What does Apple get? by rmdingler · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Since this is in no way a rare instance of a powerful man cashing in public clout for some private wealth, ask yourself what the corporations get in return.

    A few hundred million in under priced stock options and bonus money for what? You may or may not like Apple, but they're not a stupid company. The value of a few meetings, a couple of favorable trade exceptions, and some lucrative government contract work probably more than covers this expense.

    The really civilized thing is, we do almost all of our bribery above board these days.

    --
    Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

    Ernest Hemingway

    1. Re:What does Apple get? by tomhath · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The really civilized thing is, we do almost all of our bribery above board these days.

      Sometimes the money isn't a good investment. The Clinton Foundation went from collecting millions in donations from foreign nationals to layoffs in just a few weeks last fall.

  5. And? by Artem+S.+Tashkinov · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What's in there for us, mere mortals? The guy got lucky and earned 6800% on his investment, great. Now where are the stories of people losing money by investing in a bad stock?

    Also, where would most people get $400K to invest in stock options when they have no spare money at all or even owe lots of money until they hit their late 50s?

    Or is it a story about a super successful company which is known to have a cult status, which allows it to sell the same product year after year with minimal changes, yet earn billions? I don't understand.

  6. Re:Sold at 1/5th original value? ummm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You missed that it said pre-split. In 2014 Apple stock had a 7:1 split so $502.68 was equivalent to buying at $71.81. What blow my mind is they let him buy director options for $7.48/share when they were worth $71.81. Must be nice being able to spend $441,000 to buy stock worth $4.2 million.

  7. Re:Poor Guy. Guess He Needs the Money... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The Global Warming Carbon Credit Kickback Scam is not progressing as he thought it would...

    Call it what you will, but it's a compromise because no one wants to do anything about global warming if it comes out of their own pockets.

    But one way or another, we will pay for it. And as time goes on while very little is done, the costs will be grow and become ever more expensive.

    Even with the Free Markets making changes (green energy, EVs, etc...) there will be pain for the average folks as the climate gets worse. It's already happening.

    In other words, any criticisms or "skepticism" by folks who are completely unqualified to be skeptics; resistance; pointing of fingers are developing countries who mistakenly insist that they have to use fossil fuels to develop; and other distraction nonsense in this issue is completely and utterly irrelevant.

    You and your opinion are irrelevant.

    Things are happening and it's just a question of where one wants to be when the shit hits the fan.

  8. Re:Poor Guy. Guess He Needs the Money... by RobotRunAmok · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Sure, but when you are racking up $30K utility bills at your Tennessee estate you can blow through your millions pretty quickly...

  9. Re:Sold at 1/5th original value? ummm... by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 3, Funny

    So when he acquired them they were worth ~ $500 ... and sold for ~$136. Must have read that wrong, yeah?

    Pst. I'll let you in on a secret Wallstreet doesn't want you to know about: It's called a 7:1 stock split.

    --
    Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
  10. News for Nerds ? by Crashmarik · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This isn't even front page material for Yahoo Finance.

    1. Re:News for Nerds ? by RobotRunAmok · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's a clumsy and back-handed attempt to gin up an Alarmist vs. Denier thread, which is the only reliable source for pageviews slashdot has these days. C'mon, play along...!

  11. Re:What does Apple get? - Stability, sanity, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What Apple gets is simple. Stability, sanity and some level of honesty in the face of huge temptation and fear.

    You only have to look at Nokia to see what can happen if the wrong people get onto the board of a company. Somehow or other, the Nokia board managed to convince its self that a company which had managed to survive multiple revolutions in mobile communications was best led by a man who had failed repeatedly to build mobile success at Microsoft. The results are well known (image from this article).

    Why the did this I have no idea. Panic? Bribes? Stupidity? There has been no clear criminal investigation when there should have been but it seems they were just taken in by fear and a smooth talking failure in Elop. Still, the point is that now Apple may be in a similar situation. They have various long term technologies which won't pay off immediately. Nokia was doing Meego, it's own independent touch screen OS; Apple is doing it's own smart phone chips. They will now be under pressure from Chinese rivals and will go both down as well as up. If you keep working on these technologies you will survive and profit but you are very likely to suffer some relative decline even so. If your board panics and changes everything to try to force growth in a market where there is no more space, you may lose everything that you already have.

    No idea if Gore is the right guy, however I know how much could be lost if he's the wrong one. Apple's profits, around $40Billion yearly, are more than ten times Nokia's. Imagine those disappeared in two years because Apple became involved in someone like Microsoft and brought in someone like Elop.

  12. Re:He should sell the remainder... by v1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    regardless of whether or not this was the optimal time to sell, you can't buy groceries with stocks. Gotta cash out at some point. He's just decided he's ready to quit growing his money and start spending it.

    --
    I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
  13. Re:Funny how conservatives hate success by ooloorie · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I read through some of the comments on this story, and I couldn't help but notice there were quite a few that related Gore's politics and finance. None gave him any credit at all for financial acumen.

    Financial acumen? Gore got rich the same way Clinton did: by translating his political power, political advocacy, and connections into money.

    If you get rich legally before you enter politics, that shows that you can succeed by producing stuff people want. If you get rich after you leave high government office, it strongly suggests that you are a corrupt fraud. Gore clearly did the latter.

  14. Re: Poor Guy. Guess He Needs the Money... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Are those the same fifth graders who write Trumps' speeches?

  15. Re:He should sell the remainder... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    God damnit it's AAPL not APPL!

  16. What idiot wrote this article? by gnasher719 · · Score: 2

    So al Gore sold lots of Apple shares. Someone wanted to appear smart and wrote "sold 215,437 shares of Apple stock (APPL)"

    Apparently that idiot isn't aware that APPL is a long defunct oil company that hasn't traded for many years. Apple's stock symbol is AAPL.

  17. Re:Poor Guy. Guess He Needs the Money... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It also requires a 5" main to his house, which is why 80% of
    rural Tennessee does not enjoy natural gas to their homes.

    CAP === 'confers'

  18. More seriously, we pick a team & don't pay att by raymorris · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I joked that politicians can do anything they want as long as they complain about big business while they do it.

    The more serious explanation, I think, is that most Americans just pick a party or politician as their "team", then move on to other things. Most don't spend a lot of time, or have the inclination, to carefully watch what "their" politicians do after they are elected. Their attention span is just long enough to root for their favorite team/player, not enough to actually see what the politician is doing. So whoever originally decided they like Hillary, or Trump, or Gore, is unlikely to later hold them accountable for their actions. Once a majority of Americans "like" you, once they are rooting for you, you can do whatever you want with little consequences.

  19. Re: Poor Guy. Guess He Needs the Money... by tehcyder · · Score: 2

    what do you mean qualified. any 5th grade science student can tell you global warming is a hoax

    I'm rather more interested in the opinion of actual adult scientists.

    --
    To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it