Unity bosses sold stock days before development fees announcement::Unity executives sold thousands of shares in the weeks leading up to last night’s hugely controversial announcement it …

  • fartsparkles@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    7
    ·
    1 year ago

    It would be interesting to see if they buy more shares after this PR nightmare; sell shares high, drop pricing news, share price tanks, buy shares low.

    Smells like insider trading and market manipulation to me (pump and dump followed by poop and scoop).

    • bob_wiley@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      It’s likely that all these executives get part of their compensation in the form of stock. In many cases this is given, then has a vesting schedule where you don’t actually get access to it for a year or two or three. This serves a couple purposes. One is tie their compensation to the stock… pay for performance, and another is to keep people around, as they would have to forfeit the stock which hasn’t vested if they decide to leave… the old golden handcuffs.

      Part of my compensation is like this, just on a smaller scale.

      In talking with a financial advisor, they said to treat this like a normal part of my compensation. Rather than leave it all in the company stock, which would leave me extremely overweighted in one stock, it was best to sell it and apply the funds according to whatever my broader more diversified strategy is.

      September is a common time for this stuff to happen. So the stock finally vested, as it does every year, and they sold it, like they probably do every year (this is public record, you can check), so they can diversify their holdings.

      • fartsparkles@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        I too receive vesting stock from my enterprise however I don’t agree about the September comment since September is historically the month when stocks perform the worst.

        Typically executives will inform their investors of their plans to sell and the schedule (trading plan) for that as to not spook investors by the sudden sell and to not get slapped for insider trading (by scheduling far ahead, with a broker executing the plan on a set date).

        It’s not clear whether that’s what has happened here but if those were stock selloffs without a trading plan, and the price dropped suddenly afterwards, it does indeed smell like insider trading.

        • Ms. ArmoredThirteen@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          Trade windows are often for 30 or so days after earnings reports. Unity’s Q2 shareholder letter was Aug 2nd this year. Could very well just be the usual trading window.