Forbes.com - Magazine Article

Forbes.com - Magazine Article


Faces In The News
Gates Sells 12M Microsoft Shares
Fahmida Y. Rashid, 08.05.05, 5:45 PM ET

Everyone else is cashing in on Microsoft, so why not the company's chairman?

Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) Chairman Bill Gates has sold about 12 million shares of the company's common stock in a series of transactions over a five-day period, according to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings. The filings, six in all, covered the period from July 27 to Aug. 2. The sales ranged from $25.65 per share to $26.89. At the average price, Gates would have made over $315 million from the sales. Microsoft announced its second-quarter earnings on July 21, when it closed at $26.44. After a slight drop to $25.68, share prices have been rising steadily, closing at $27.76 on Friday.

The transactions ranged in size, with the largest sale of 570,618 shares and the smallest of 100 shares. On Aug. 2 alone he sold approximately 4 million shares for a haul of $99 million.

Other filings showed that Robert Bach, a Microsoft senior vice president, also sold 30,000 shares on Aug. 2. Other Microsoft senior vice-presidents, namely Kevin Johnson, Eric Rudder and Jeffrey Raikes, sold some shares, but their transactions remained below 1,000.

Gates still owns more than 1 billion shares of Microsoft, which are worth about $27.8 billion at Friday's closing price.