Money Matters, Simplified.
Google co-founders plan to sell $5mn shares
by Ishita Sood - January 24, 2010 - comments
Headquarted in Mountain View, Calif., Google has more than 19,000 full-time employees across the world.
New York, January 24 -- Google Inc.'s co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin announced plans of selling 5 million shares of the search engine as part of a five-year stock trading plan.
Under the trading plan, the co-founders will be reducing their combined holdings from 57.7 million common shares (approximately 18 percent) to 47.7 million shares (15 percent).
According to the U.S. Securities and Exchange filing, the two will also be reducing their voting shares from 59 percent to 48 percent.
“These pre-arranged stock trading plans were adopted in order to allow Larry and Sergey to sell a portion of their Google stock over time as part of their respective long-term strategies for individual asset diversification and liquidity,” read the filing.
Various companies have undergone similar trading plan as Google. The main aim of such plans is to diversify investment portfolios.
The filing
Google’s filing further said that its plans, which were adopted in Nov. 2009, had the aim of matching “respective long-term strategies for individual asset diversification and liquidity.”
“Because these plans were established well in advance of a trade, they also help avoid concerns about whether these officers had material, non-public information when they made a decision to sell their stocks,” said a Google spokesman.
Further, the spokesperson talked of Google’s co-founders and said, “Both [are] as committed as ever to Google and are integrally involved in our day-to-day management and product strategy. The majority of their net worth remains with Google.”
The Internet giant, who went public in 2004, announced last year its two classes of stocks. Class A stocks are traded on the NASDAQ, while Class B shares are kept aside for the company insiders. Class B has ten times more voting rights than the Class A stocks.
About Google Inc.
Google Inc., founded in 1998, has Page as president for products and Brin as president for technology.
Google generates its profits from advertising, and the company has recently developed an open source web browser and a mobile phone operating system.
Headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., Google has more than 19,000 full time employees across the world.
It has also been repeatedly named the number one ‘Best Place to Work’ by the Fortune Magazine.
Google is also one of the most powerful brands in the world, whose mission is “to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
After Friday’s news Google’s shares slipped by 0.4 percent.