The Strategist

Zuckerberg is back to selling Facebook shares daily



07/15/2021 - 04:20



Zuckerberg is back to selling his Facebook shares almost daily after a break of nearly a year. Since November last year, he has sold $2.8bn worth of securities, 90% of which went to charity and $200m went into the billionaire's pocket.



Anthony Quintano
Anthony Quintano
Billionaire Mark Zuckerberg has started putting his Facebook shares up for sale almost every business day since November 2020 after a break of almost a year, American Forbes reported citing documents filed by the company with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

They show that between November 9, 2020 and July 14, 2021, Facebook's co-founder and CEO sold 9.4 million shares of the company worth $2.8 billion. About 90% of the proceeds from the sale went to the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), a charity. A smaller portion - about $200 million after taxes, according to Forbes estimates - went directly into the pocket of the billionaire, whose fortune, according to Forbes Real-Time, is $126.8 billion. 98% of Zuckerberg's fortune is in his shares in Facebook.

Zuckerberg's stake in Facebook now stands at 14%. This is half of what it was in 2012, when Facebook held its IPO. In 2015, Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan founded the charity CZI and promised in a letter to their future daughter to donate 99% of their shares in Facebook, then worth $45bn, to education and medical treatment during their lifetime. In 2016, Zuckerberg began selling shares in the company as part of this initiative. In total, he has so far sold 132 million shares worth $15 billion, of which the billionaire has personally received about $2.1 billion (after taxes), according to Forbes estimates.

The sales peaked in 2018, when Zuckerberg sold $5.3 billion worth of shares. In November 2019, the billionaire abruptly stopped selling shares and has since made only one donation through his foundation worth $60 million (204,700 shares) to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation (SVCF).

source: forbes.com