John Battelle reports from Barrons that “As Google starts to spend the $5 billion it raised through two stock offerings in the past year and a half, its senior executives have aggressively sold shares. Co-founders Brin and Page have each sold more than $1.5 billion of stock. CEO Eric Schmidt sold $493 million. Omid Kordestani, senior vice president of global sales and business development, sold $793 million, and Ram Shriram, a director, pocketed $442 million, according to Thomson Financial.
All very interesting especially when you read here the tricks Google are playing with their bottom line. “But since Google calls them “GSU”s instead of “stock grants” they can claim they aren’t technically breaking FASB rules by not expensing them at the time of issuance- because the FASB rules didn’t spell out the phrase “Google Stock Unit” in its new regulations. This is important because if all those GSUs were properly expensed NOW, Google would be showing massive losses per quarter instead of a profit.”
Be interesting to see how low the stock will go….
