Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) CEO Tim Cook has recently increased his net value by $36 million after selling some of his shares in the company.
Cook, whose position at Apple is one of the post prestigious CEO positions in the tech industry, sold shares for $36 million. Normally if an executive disposes of part of his or her share portfolio for such a huge amount of money, there is usually a lot of suspicion about the performance of the company. However, in Apple’s case, it is quite different because it is not just any firm and the company has been performing quite well.
The CEO sold his shares a few weeks after the announcement of positive quarterly results from the previous quarter. The company’s shares have risen by 11% since the July 26 announcement. The Apple shares had been stuck below $100 for a few months and they hit a low of $90 in the middle of May. The shares, however, hit a high of $108 per share on Friday, marking an impressive recovery.
The sale of the CEO’s shares is also not expected to cause a lot of controversy with the Securities and Exchange Commission since the sale of the shares was carried out in accordance with rule 10b5-1. The SEC established this rule to allow company insiders of firms that have publicly traded stock to come up with trading plans for the stock that they own in their companies.
The regulation allows shareholders to dispose a predetermined amount of shares at any one time. Company insiders have been taking advantage of the rule to avoid insider trading accusations. The CEO would have still disposed of 334,000 shares according to his predetermined plan.
