5 ways to reduce advertising network latency

Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg, who is second in command at the free content ad network, sold a big chunk of shares in the company just days after stocks finally hit a higher value than they were assigned at the firm's initial public offering (IPO).

US regulatory filings released late last week show that Sandberg offloaded a further 2.37 million shares at an average price of $38 – altogether worth around £91m to the ex-Google exec and author of Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead.

As we noted last month, Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg has retained his shares. Of course, he said at the time – just after the company's gigantic belly-flop on the New York Stock Exchange in May last year – that he wouldn't be selling any stock for personal gains until September 2013 at the earliest.

Sandberg, on the other hand, has regularly shifted her stock under automated trading plans.

Significantly, her shares sale – dated 9 August on the filing – is the biggest one made by any of the high flyers at Facebook since it punched through its IPO price 10 days earlier, on 30 July this year.

In November 2012, Zuck's right-hand woman banked approximately $7.44m after she sold around 353,000 of her shares in Facebook as trading restrictions for employees expired. But her latest sale completely eclipses that figure.

Despite letting go of around five per cent of the stock, Sandberg still holds more than $1bn in Facebook shares.

Shares in Facebook were slightly up on Nasdaq at $38.56 in after-hour trading on Friday.

It took Facebook more than a year to slide past its IPO share price only after the company last month satisfied Wall Street with impressive record earnings off the back of strong mobile growth. ®

Supercharge your infrastructure