Comment by harles
2 years ago
I hope so, but if it’s likely to get smacked down by the FTC, it’s unlikely Unity would try this path. I’m sure this has been in the works for a long time and all the backlash was anticipated - they just expect huge profits on the other side.
We'll see I guess! But even if it's not illegal the shortsightedness is staggering, which makes me question if leadership would have even foreseen legal problems
I think this is called a single round game. They screw everyone over and will never be trusted again, but get a one time payout in the process. It just seems like a company of Unity’s scale must have a better plan than that.
Since the goal of management is to provide shareholder value, could the current management be sued by the shareholders for basically destroying the long term value of the company?
Well, about that: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/unity-software-incs-president...
Believe it or not this is completely legal in the US.
The way it works is that company insiders can’t freely sell or buy stock, instead they have to submit a form (Form 4) to the SEC on which they report the sale, almost always based on a prior setup plan (called Rule 10b5-1 plan) that can’t be changed and automatically effectuates. These forms get published.
The CEO’s Form 4 can be found here: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1810806/000181080623... It shows the plan to sell shares was created in May this year.
The other executives also sold shares, which can be found under “Ownership Disclosures” here: https://www.sec.gov/edgar/browse/?CIK=0001810806
This is of course silly because the CEO can just plan something detrimental for September all the way back in April (which the fuckery with the terms suggests happens), create a plan in May to sell shares in September just before the announcement is made and make sure that the drop in stock price doesn’t affect his wallet.
But in the good old US of A that all considered above board.
I saw that, but I honestly think it’s a non-story. That’s ~$80k of stock. I sold more of my company’s stock the last quarter (just as part of my vesting schedule) and I’m no exec. I’m sure that’s just a small part of his vest for the quarter - possibly even less than 10%.