Thiel in Facebook offload
Facebook’s first major investor, Peter Thiel, has sold threequarters of his remaining stake in the social network as part of a previously established trading plan, a regulatory filing showed.
Thiel, who became a New Zealand citizen in 2011, is a member of Facebook’s board.
He had already sold more than US$1 billion (NZ$1.5 billion) worth of its stock before the filing made on Tuesday.
It said he had sold another 160,805 shares for about US$29m, leaving his holdings at 59,913 Class A shares in the company.
Thiel has faced calls for his removal from Facebook’s board, given he is the only major name in Silicon Valley to back President Donald Trump.
Chief executive and cofounder Mark Zuckerberg has said Thiel should stay, citing the importance of diversity of opinion at the company.
A Facebook representative called Thiel’s sales routine.
Thiel co-founded payment service PayPal and is known for funding the Hulk Hogan lawsuit that led to the shutdown of online news site Gawker. He became a Facebook investor in 2004 with an initial investment of US$500,000 at a US$5m valuation.
When Zuckerberg took the company public in 2012, Thiel sold 16.8 million shares at the IPO for about US$640m.
Later the same year, he sold roughly 20 million of his remaining 26 million shares for US$400m after the expiry of a lockup.
He hit the market once again in 2016 to sell a little less than 1 million shares for about US$100m.
Facebook shares were down 0.7 per cent at US$180.59 on Wednesday. –Reuters