this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2023
553 points (92.0% liked)

Technology

59666 readers
3616 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] AlmightySnoo 122 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

It's a low amount though (2000*36=€72k). What is more concerning is his 50,610 shares that he sold in total in the past year, as now that is a fairly big amount if he planned this move many months ago.

To be fair, these guys are much more suspicious:

Chief among them being Tomer Bar-Zeev, Unity’s president of growth, who sold 37,500 shares on September 1 for roughly $1,406,250, and board director Shlomo Dovrat, who sold 68,454 shares on August 30 for around $2,576,608.

EDIT:

Yeah, nothing really unusual in Riccitiello's trades. He may be an asshole but that's no reason to immediately accuse him of insider trading for a lousy $77.15k worth of shares given that he already has a pattern of selling way bigger amounts:

EDIT 2:

Here's Riccitiello's filing for that trade: https://www.secform4.com/filings/1810806/0001810806-23-000163.htm

Read in particular this part:

( 2 )The sales reported on this Form 4 were effected pursuant to a Rule 10b5-1 trading plan adopted by the Reporting Person on May 19, 2023.

That's not insider trading. That's a pre-planned trade (see Investopedia's entry about Rule 10b5-1) that would have been executed no matter what.

[–] [email protected] 45 points 1 year ago

I’m glad to see some light being shined on the taint rather than it all on the asshole.

[–] Copernican 7 points 1 year ago

Yeah, 2000 is nothing compared to the 50k shares he sold already. I think the bigger data point is probably how many shares does he own in total. It's not uncommon to diversity and minimize some exposure to one company. Give stock is a major compensation structure for ceo's, it makes sense they they liquidate it at periodically. I'm curious is September 1 is a vesting day or something for stock awards.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

It can be a pre-planned trade. However they also could have waited for the shares to be sold then make the announcement.

Who knows. I'm not here as a judge.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

never found the trades themselves suspicious (scheduled vesting) but the timing of their announcement, which JR had complete control over, is a bit fucky. Consider they edited the wiki in mid June. Then wait two months to announce a huge policy change, right after everyone that was getting out had already gotten gone.