'Larry and Sergey' to offload 10m Google shares
AKA $5.5 billion
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Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page each plan to sell 5 million shares of their common stock in the company over the next five years.
According to an SEC filing, this is part of their respective "long-term strategies for individual asset diversification and liquidity."
Larry and Sergey - as the filing actually refers to them - currently hold 57.7 million shares of Class B Google common stock. That represents roughly 59 per cent of the voting power of the company’s outstanding capital stock.
After selling 10 million shares, their voting power would drop to 49 per cent. But when you toss in the stock held by CEO Eric Schmidt, the Google holy trinity - who have vowed to work together until 2024 - will still control the majority of the company's voting shares.
Schmidt holds about 12 per cent of Google's common stock.
Brin and Page adopted their new stock-trading plans on November 30, after the completion of a five-year plan they adopted when the company went public in 2004.
As of today, 5 million shares of Google stock are worth about $2.75 billion. ®
COMMENTS
Erm, they will keep their voting power...
...because of their evil dual-class stock structure.
Google's Class B shares, owned by Page, Brin, CEO Eric Schmidt and some directors, hold 10 times the voting power of its regular, Class A stock. That's why Google is one big pyramid scheme: if you are a plain stock owner (i.e. Class A and not on an employee stock option program), there is only ONE way to make money, and that is from positive stock development! Buy GOOG and try to sell higher.
Evil? Well, sure. Remember that Google has not paid any dividends up to now. So your chance of making money from dividends (i.e. the classical way to earn money with an investment) is zero. And this will not change unless the Class B stock owners decide otherwise. And as they do not have interest to share the money, they probably won't vote for dividends to be paid. The whole talk about "earnings per share" is just an indicator for the company development, that is irrelevant because no dividends are paid to the investors.
Those who buy and recommend GOOG are gamblers. They can not decide on the future of the company and they do not get dividends. They ONLY gain from selling stock higher (i.e. by finding the next dumb person).
Also, please note that Brin, Page, Schmidt, and some of the directors have sold already billions of stock. That's the entire purpose of Google: to enrich the owners of Class B stock.
We need an "evil Google" icon.
They would sell it faster if they could
Yes they can physically sell it, but realistically, no.
This represents roughly 10% of their holdings, which falls within the hey even a rich guy wants to cash in and spend some of his money. And after Enron, Worldcom, Tyco etc no one smart has all their investments in one stock.
I'm sure they would cash out more shares at this unsustainable monopoly backed stocked price, but the more the sold, and the quicker they sold them the more speculation there would be.
Other traders would catch wind of this and everyone would start selling shares QUICK, the price would tank so fast, that they may actually have trouble finding brokers or firms willing to buy shares at any price. The same has always true about Bill G'S fortune, he can't really even cash out half of it in his lifetime without devaluing it.
Which is part of the reason an Estate tax makes such good sense. Yanks originally left the UK to flee that kind of entitlement and sniveling wastes of life that are produces by massive inheritance. And then the U.S goes and makes our own political, corporate and hollywood royalty, and we end up with even worse wastes of a human organs, like Paris Hilton and most of the rest of LA
RE: Clueless Anonymous -> MSFT pays dividend since 2003
"Microsoft payed dividend only once over the last 10 years and it is not called a scam for some reason, but GooG is. WTF?"
Exactly: WTF are YOU talking about, Clueless Anonymous Coward?
Typical internet BS, spread by some idiot with no clue whatsoever, let alone having the basic skills to check his BS first... MSFT pays annual dividend since 2003, you fool.
As a matter of fact they are consistently INCREASING their divident, let alone paying it quaarterly: http://www.dividendgrowthinvestor.com/2009/02/microsoft-msft-dividend-stock-analysis.html
http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2009/dec09/12-09DecQuarterlyDividendPR.mspx
Stop spreading your ignorant moronic crap, please.
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