Just to jump on the bandwagon...
Of course he wont sell any shares, he'll borrow money against the value of them in his pension pot investment portfolio.
Which means its tax free.
Facebook's Chief Operating Officer has divested herself of MORE Facebook shares, ditching just under a million on Friday and netting a cool $26.2m. A little something for Christmas, perhaps? It bumps up the total cash haul Sandberg has made from Facebook shares to $41.5m. That's all since the end of October when the directors …
IANAIFA... However if the reports are to be believed, I gather that a number of our 'celebs' dont get paid. But take out loans against the value of their assets. Thats a debatable value!! :)
And am sure I've seen similar approaches that others take against the value of their stock. I suppose the risk is you borrow $1billion in cash against $1billion in shares, But then the shares tank. Although dont they say never owe your Bank £1000, make sure you owe them millions?
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It's likely a tax move. Depending on how the income is classified and how hard Uncle Sam insists on impacting1 the fiscal cliff, she is looking at saving about $2m in taxes by selling today instead of waiting another month. I'm sure it's a delicate balance since the value of her stock holdings could rise or fall that much in a week. In short I would classify this as making sure she has a bird in hand since most media outlets have everyone in a tizzy over what the bush will look like if the folks in the D.C. don't finish consulting the chicken bones before the end of the Mayan calendar.
1. I know everyone talks of going over the fiscal cliff but that assumes we are on the top but they clearly aren't paying attention and any interaction with a fiscal cliff will surely be a square on impact near the bottom.
It's a tax-efficient divestment. She still holds lots and lots of shares. This allows bonuses to paid in stock rather than income, which given the considerable discrepancy in US tax between capital gains (selling vested stock previously awarded is taxed at a whopping 15%) and income tax makes (could be > 30%) more sense for both company and director.
Exactly!
Any american who has a retirement fund should be thinking about the current value of their retirement fund. Even state employee retirement funds are invested in the stock market and anyone who thinks they will be guaranteed money when the well is dry is fooling themselves.
Best wishes on America surviving the next four years.
I don't really buy into the FB hype but I doubt that social networks are a fad - they speak to something very basic within our nature.
On the other hand, if you are talking about the share price, then I absolutely agree - I think that usage will increase as the proportion of the world using the internet increases but I can't see that they can realistically monetise the site enough to be worth the market capitalisation. There may be a great equalisation, therefore, as membership rises and the share price stagnates until the valuation gets closer to being reasonable.
Just my two cents.
Social networks are here to stay. The only real question is in what form. Betting on FB is in my mind a dangerous one because it's still too early in the game to bet on what the future will look like. Most likely someone will come out with something better that will also be FB compatible and that will be that.
The change will most likely come when the next generation come into their own ... and then FB will likely become the OAP's version of that other dead social network MySpace.
If you'd bought at the lowest point you could still have made a mint.
That is always the case with shares. The key being knowing when bottom has been reached. But that isn't applicable Mrs Sandberg and not really to Facebook's IPO which was very close to a "pump and dump" scheme: lots of shares were sold at inflated price.
El Reg !!!!!!
What do you mean they don't have any shares, I "invested" 100 Beellion dollars in El Reg.......The first results were the badges, I am jsut waiting on them paying out the first dividend.
The first divided will be paid in FB shares........... meeehhhhhhh.
The second dividend will be paid in Ipads...........meeehhhhhhh.
Keep in mind that the earliest investors were venture capitalists. They support a lot of companies that end up failing in the end on the off chance 1:1000 ends up like Facebook.
For them to cash out isn't necessarily a bad thing, they have to return the profit to their investors to pay back for the other 999 startups that didn't make it.
To make mmmmmooooorrrrreeeeeee!!!!!
A paltry 27 meeellion dollars isn't going to buy much of an underground lair now is it? There's wear and tear on sharks, henchmen, self-destruct buttons, superhero insurance, monorails... Also beautiful femmes fatales do not come cheap. Or in the case of a female COO, I guess she's going to be looking at dudes dangereuses...
because once you're worth £500m+ money isn't what drives you anymore.
to most of us plebs a job is a means of getting our bills paid, eating food and not much else, given the choice i personally wouldn't work, but then i'm not massively career driven in the first place, i don't live for my job and feel no particular loyalty towards my employer. (who in turn feels none..or very little towards me)
maybe that's why i'm still a techie and not a COO in the first place?