| Topic Name: |
Dale to Sell Some Stock |
| Message Name: |
Additional 25,000 Share Gift |
| Date Posted: |
03/03/2006 |
| In Reply To: |
Well, before some of the rest of you decide to jump on this topic... a press release directly from the heart of the beast.
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/060303/20060303005220.html?.v=1
Personal opinion: wrong message. Very wrong message. Be interesting to see which way the market moves today. 100,000 shares out of his million+ is relatively small, but it is a move that does not inspire confidence. Frankly, at this point in the firm's life, I would prefer to see the CEO accumulating stock with his own money. "Diversifying" is not a message you want to hear when the guy is still running the show. "Diversifying" means that you don't exactly have a lot of confidence that your investment will grow. It is the correct strategy for those of us will little or no net worth, but should not be the correct strategy for people who run the business. If he has to diversify for his own financial reasons, then he needs to buy his own stock holdings with his own money.
What cheeses me off is that the stock has managed to stabilize some and even slowly start moving up. I can't believe that the market will look on this favorably. But then, what do I know?
Long past time for Dale to move on. |
| Message: |
The gift part doesn't feel right.
It's like McDonald's saying they will donate $0.20 for every hamburger you buy. All they really want to do is sell hamburgers and make you feel good about buying them. All Dale really wants to do is sell his stock, but he is making us feel good about it by donating 20% of his offloading to charity.
In reality, gifting stock is a great way to save/avoid taxes.
The recipient has to sell the stock to get use of the gift and they pay the taxes on the sale. Otherwise, the donor would have to sell the stock, pay the taxes, and gift the money.
Not to discount anyone's contribution to charity, but the gift, or any other donation, could have been made without attaching it to this event. The stock gift to charity here is for his own personal financial planning purposes ("The objective of this plan is to facilitate the orderly sale of common stock for diversification and tax-planning purposes"), and to soften the fact that he is selling out of his Hewitt position - not for straight out generosity.
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