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High-profile CEOs, founders, and heirs are selling stock by the bucketload in the companies that made them billionaires. For nearly the entire bunch, shares prices are trading near all-time-highs.<\/p>\n
Jeff Bezos sold Amazon shares<\/a> worth $8.5 billion in multiple transactions this month. Meanwhile, Jamie Dimon, CEO and chairman of JPMorgan Chase, sold $150 million in stock last week<\/a>, his\u00a0 first cashing out since taking the top job at the bank 18 years ago. Around the same time, Leon Black, co-founder and former CEO of Apollo Global Management, shed $172.8 million in stock<\/a>\u2014also a first-ever stock sale.\u00a0<\/p>\n In dozens of trades since the beginning of February, Mark Zuckerberg unloaded about 1.4 million shares of Meta stock worth roughly $638 million, according to an analysis from insider stock sales data firm Verity. This latest batch of sales came after previously culling 588,200 shares in November, 688,400 in December, and 447,200 in January. He sold nearly $600 million in the three months leading up to February and his proceeds from combined sales during the past four months have reached $1.2 billion.\u00a0<\/p>\n Similarly, the trust for the Walton family, heirs to Walmart\u2019s founder, sold $1.5 billion in Walmart stock this month<\/a>. The family owns about 45% of Walmart\u2019s shares, according to Bloomberg.<\/p>\n Many of the sales were made according to 10b5-1 trading plans that the executives set up late last year and early this year. These trading plans are created in advance so that shares are automatically sold by a broker at a specific date or when the stock hits a certain price. They\u2019re set up to be triggered at a time when the executive doesn\u2019t possess material non-public information that could potentially move the stock price and gives the executive a defense against potential insider trading charges by regulators.<\/p>\n The sales come as the S&P 500 index is at an all-time high, rising 28% in the past year. The Nasdaq composite index is up nearly 40% the past year.\u00a0<\/p>\n Black, of Apollo Global Management, was the one founder of the bunch to sell outside of a 10b5-1 trading plan. His spokesperson said<\/a> that the trade was made as part of routine tax and estate planning and to boost the growth of his family office, Elysium Management. The Walton family\u2019s sales were also outside of a 10b5-1 plan. A 2015 statement from the Walton family said that its members will sell shares from \u201ctime to time\u201d to curb increases in its ownership of the retail giant. The Waltons set up the trust that same year and told Walmart that it had no set timetable for sales of company stock.<\/p>\n Calm before the storm<\/strong><\/p>\n Alan Johnson, a compensation consultant who works with financial services firms, said the stock sales could be due to the fact that the election might shake things up in the fall. Thus, if an executive is currently \u201cmore in the money\u201d than they expected, diversifying their holdings is a good idea. Plus, wealthy stock holders may be taking advantage of tax breaks implemented during the Trump administration, noted Johnson, in case they are eliminated under any new administration or Congress after the upcoming elections.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you\u2019re reading the tea leaves and looking at what may happen with our politics in the next year or so, things are pretty good right now\u2014the markets are up,\u201d said Johnson, president of Johnson Associates. \u201cWith our politics and everything else going on geopolitically, maybe it won\u2019t be as good a year from now or two years from now.\u201d<\/p>\n As for Dimon, Johnson said the bank CEO is known for holding stock in the company, a tactic that has enriched him. Dimon\u2019s net worth according to Forbes is $2.1 billion.<\/p>\n \u201cThe way he of course became fabulously wealthy was to get the stock, keep it and have the stock price go up,\u201d said Johnson. \u201cWhat\u2019s unusual about him selling is he\u2019s doing it so late in his career.\u201d<\/p>\n Most executives would have sold moderate amounts along the way, he explained. That doesn\u2019t necessarily mean anything about Dimon\u2019s tenure at the bank potentially having an end date, said Johnson.<\/p>\n \u201cA joke I\u2019ve used with clients is that, looking back 10 years from now, one of the questions we\u2019ll be asking is, \u2018Who is going to replace Jamie Dimon at JPMorgan?\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019ve been asking that question for 10 years already.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\nSubscribe to the CFO Daily newsletter to keep up with the trends, issues, and executives shaping corporate finance. Sign up<\/a> for free.<\/div>\n