Costolo’s trusts outta TWTR

Twitter Chief Executive Dick Costolo’s family trusts have sold off the last shares of the company he leads.

The Richard Costolo 2001 Living Trust and Lorin Costolo 2001 Living Trust, named for his wife, sold 141,730 Twitter shares on Dec. 15 for $5.32 million, according to a filing, wrapping up a series of sales that began in November.

The trusts, which no longer own any Twitter stock, had earned $17.3 million from prior sales of 425,190 shares of the microblogging service, filings show.

Costolo, who had held onto his shares after the 2013 initial public offering as a demonstration of faith in Twitter’s performance, is now working to diversify his investments.

The Twitter CEO only owns 36,028 shares in the company directly and 509,828 unvested restricted stock — which he doesn’t have control to sell until the units vest.

Until July, the CEO and his family trusts hadn’t sold a single share of Twitter stock.

“Dick has sold shares under a plan filed in the summer, and his total sales represent less than 10 percent of his total equity in Twitter,” Jim Prosser, a spokesman for the San Franciscobased company, wrote in an email.

Twitter shares have dropped 45 percent so far this year, closing Wednesday at $35.57.

In contrast, the benchmark S&P 500 index is up 8.9 percent in 2014. Bloomberg