Google CEO Eric Schmidt Selling 42 Percent Stake, 3.2M Shares of GOOG

Eric E. Schmidt, Google's Executive Chairman of the Board of Directors, will become ever more wealthy. Already a member of the One Percent club, Mr. Schmidt will be selling roughly 42 percent of his stake in Google. In total, that's 3.2 million Class A shares of common stock. According to an 8-K filing put out today by the company, this "pre-arranged trading plan was adopted in order to allow Eric to sell a portion of his Google stock as part of his long-term strategy for individual asset diversification and liquidity." As of December 31, 2012, Eric beneficially owned approximately 7.6 million shares of Class A and Class B common stock, which represented approximately 2.3% of Google's outstanding capital stock and approximately 8.2% of the voting power of Google's outstanding capital stock.


On a pro forma basis as of December 31, 2012, assuming all shares of Class A common stock (and excluding the shares of Class C capital stock to be issued pursuant to the dividend) have been sold under the trading plan, Eric would have owned approximately 4.4 million shares, which would have represented as of such date approximately 1.3% of Google's outstanding capital stock and approximately 5.0% of the voting power of Google's outstanding shares.

Of course, in the grand scheme of things this impacts Schmidt far more than it impacts Google, but he sure picked a solid time to sell: GOOG ended Friday's trading session at a new high of $785.37.