Skip to footer

Facebook, Zuckerberg to sell shares worth billions

The move comes as Facebook joins the S&P 500 Index. 

|
Reuters
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg sits for audience questions in an onstage interview for the Atlantic Magazine in Washington, in this photo from September.
  • By Matthew Shaer

Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, is selling upward of 41 million shares in the company he helped found. 

The sale is part of a larger unloading of 70 million shares of Class A Facebook stock, the Associated Press reports today. "Our principal purpose for selling shares in this offering is to obtain additional capital," reps for Facebook wrote in an SEC filing. "We intend to use the net proceeds to us from this offering for working capital and other general corporate purposes; however, we do not currently have any specific uses of the net proceeds planned." 

As for Mr. Zuckerberg's 41 million share sale, that has more to do with his decision to exercise an option on 60 million shares of Class B stock.

"We expect that the majority of the net proceeds Mr. Zuckerberg will receive upon such sale [of the Class A stock] will be used to satisfy taxes that he will incur in connection" with the acquisition of the Class B stock, according to the SEC filing. 

Of course, as Matt Levine of Bloomberg notes, the sale also has a lot to do with the fact that Facebook is joining the S&P 500, and "index investors want to buy. There is demand, so Facebook is creating the supply," Mr. Levine writes. 

In related news, earlier this week, Facebook introduced automatically-playing video advertisements in its News Feed. "Marketers will be able to use this new format to tell their stories to a large number of people on Facebook in a short amount of time," the company said in a blog post. The ads, which will presumably help the billion-plus-member social network boost revenue, were greeted favorably on Wall Street. 

The first Facebook video ad will be a teaser for the forthcoming sci-fi flick Divergent. 

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Facebook, Zuckerberg to sell shares worth billions
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/2013/1220/Facebook-Zuckerberg-to-sell-shares-worth-billions
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe