Facebook director Peter Thiel sold roughly $400 million (€321 million) worth of shares in the social networking company last week, cashing in most of his stake, according to a regulatory filing.
Mr Thiel sold his shares on Thursday and Friday at average prices ranging between $19.27 and $20.69 per share after the end of the first lockup, which barred early investors and insiders from selling shares following the initial public offering.
The sales, in which Thiel sold roughly 20 million Facebook shares, were conducted as a result of a trading plan that Thiel entered into on May 18th, according to the filing.
Thiel, who co-founded PayPal and was among Facebooks earliest backers, still owns roughly 5.6 million shares of Facebook. A spokesman for Thiel declined to comment on the sales. Facebook, founded by Mark Zuckerberg in his Harvard University dorm room, became the only US company to debut with a market value of more than $100 billion. But investors have grown disillusioned with Facebook’s inability to articulate a plan to reverse slowing revenue growth.
– (Reuters)
