On Friday Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Pricilla Chen sold 767,905 shares of Facebook stock. This stock was previously donated to the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative – a for-profit charitable organization started by the couple. The estimated value of the shares stands at an approximate $95 million.
Mark Zuckerberg first announced his philanthropic intentions in a letter that he penned to his newborn baby girl, Max. At that time Zuckerberg and Chan pledged to donate 99 percent of their current Facebook shares valued to be an approximate $45 billion to charity. Zuckerberg at that time said that the goal and motivation behind the move is to “advance human potential and promote equality for all children in the next generation.”
This is the first sale after Zuckerberg made the announcement in last December. The Facebook CEO said he was going to limit the donations to $1 billion per year to be spread out in the next three years. To ensure that Zuckerberg finds it easy to distribute his stake without the risk of giving away his control, Facebook decided to change its company stock structure. Currently Zuckerberg still holds more than 400 million shares of his company’s stock.
