Facebook’s top executives sold company shares worth more than $4bn in 2017, over double the amount of other execs at some of the largest technology firms in the US.
The total value was boosted by a 52% surge in the company’s stock price last year which also saw Mark Zuckerberg, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Sheryl Sandberg, Chief Operating Officer (COO), selling $942.5m and $316m, respectively.
Data has been collected from filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission over the year.
The social network giant’s stock outperformed the other technology shares by a wide margin.
Most of Zuckerberg’s proceeds went towards funding the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a philanthropy founded by Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla following the birth of their daughter in 2015.
WhatsApp co-founder and Facebook board member Jan Koum made 16 sales throughout the year, selling a whopping $2.8bn, the most of any top tech firm executive.
Following closely behind was Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos, who sold $2bn worth of stock. Back in April, Bezos said that he sells around $1bn worth of stocks a year to fund his Blue Origin space exploration project.
Other sellers in the big five tech firms included Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Apple CEO Tim Cook who sold $84.3m and $60m worth of shares, respectively.
The chart below shows the top-selling Facebook executives for 2017, the majority of which were made via trading plans filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Alphabet CEO Larry Page sold no shares during 2017.
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