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Autodesk CEO Reaps $57 Million from Stock Trading
Carol Bartz Pockets Stock Options Net $11 Million from
Autodesk
by Roopinder Tara,
TenLinks.com
SAN RAFAEL, California, April 19, 2001 - According to insider
trading information posted yesterday, Autodesk CEO Carol
Bartz has reaped a windfall, netting an estimated $57.7 million
from stock trading over the last year. About $11 million
resulted from exercising options in Autodesk stock. The rest
came from companies on which Bartz is listed as a director.
Bartz cashed in $6.4 million of Autodesk stock in June of
last year, $276 thousand in September, $631 thousand in November
and $3.8 million in March of this year for a total of $10.8
million. This involved 467,024 shares. But the biggest single
day was September 20th, on which Bartz cleared $13,375,000 after
exercising 100,000 options in Net Appliance. As it turns out,
this proved to be a shrewd maneuver, as Network Appliance share
price was on a slide that took it from a high of $152.75 last
fall to a low of $11.44 last month.
Bartz still holds 265,097 shares of Autodesk stock.
During the year on which the insider trading was reported,
Autodesk share prices went from the high $30s at the end of last
April to below $20 in July. At the time of this writing, it was
trading at $37.
It is not uncommon for CEO and other corporate officers to
profit from stock trading. Favorable share prices are extended
to executives as incentives in the form of stock options. The
intent is that as the executives profit, so do the rest of the
shareholders. Executives of large companies have to balance
personal gain against perception that they are "cashing
out," which could be seen as a lack of confidence by
shareholders. Oracle's flamboyant CEO Larry Ellison recently
sold 29 million shares (an estimated 2%) of his company earlier
this year to net a whopping $895 million. By way of contrast,
Richard Harrison, CEO of Parametric Technology Corp., had a much
less lucrative relationship with his company, amassing only a
paper gain of $92,204 last year after acquiring 7,400 shares of
PTC stock.
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