Come on people you’re all staring at flashing LEDs distracting you and you’re ignoring Riccitiello’s ownership of over 400,000 EA shares.
He moved the EA stock price by 2 dollars the day they announced the Unity deal.
Unity Bosses Sold Stock Ahead Of Scummy Dev Fees Announcement
Submitted 1 year ago by FlyingSquid@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
https://kotaku.com/unity-developer-fee-installs-john-riccitiello-sold-stoc-1850834439
Comments
mycroft@lemmy.world 1 year ago
vinniep@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Unity did a bad thing, but the stock sale here is a complete non-event.
According to Guru Focus, Unity CEO John Riccitiello, one of the highest-paid bosses in gaming, sold 2,000 Unity shares on September 6, a week prior to its September 12 announcement. Guru Focus notes that this follows a trend, reporting that Riccitiello has sold a total of 50,610 shares this year, and purchased none.
He receives and sells stock constantly, as do most execs of publicly traded companies. Their compensation is majority stock, which incentivizes them to maximize stock prices since a higher price means more money RIGHT NOW for them. Look up any publicly traded company and peek at their insider trading info. Microsoft as a random reference and here’s Unity so you can see everyone else and the long term trends.
The piece cites Guru Focus as their source of this info as if they have some keen inside information or something, but it’s literally public data that anyone with an internet connection can look up as these sorts of notices are required for publicly traded companies. Riccitiello only sold about $83k worth of stock before the announcement for a total of about $1.1M worth of stock this year, vs about $33M last year, and close to $100M in 2021. The idea that he dumped $83k worth of stock to beat bad news Unity was dropping is just a hilariously bad take.
notabird@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Pretty much every smoking gun insider trading story trending in social media.
schmorpel@slrpnk.net 1 year ago
Some rat-off-sinking-ship move? Only in this case the rat also was responsible for the sinking, and leaves with a pile of cash? But then I’m no expert in either gaming nor stocks, nor ships.
Watching turbo capitalism eat itself live and in colour is rad.
d3Xt3r@lemmy.nz 1 year ago
I’m no expert either, but this could be a deliberate exit plan that CEOs do, or if he plans to stick around, it could be a deliberate plan to buy back shares at a lower price - so even if he bought back all the shares he sold, he’d be making a big profit. Could also be combined with a ploy to introduce the actual pricing plan they wanted to implement all along, and when they implement it, it won’t seem so bad combined to what they’ve proposed currently and people, especially those deeply invested in the Unity ecosystem, will lap it up.
RedditWanderer@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Or like most CEOs all his trading is done by a 3rd party so there is no conflict of interest
schmorpel@slrpnk.net 1 year ago
Sadly none of these options seem to add anything of tangible quality to actual life, just yet another bit of scamming people out of money somehow to add to the general dystopian vibe.
YurkshireLad@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
Isn’t that what executives usually do?
Lord_McAlister@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Twitter, Reddit, Netflix, Unity, we keep asking why these corporations are so greedy, but we know the answer. Because we let them be.
Why shouldn’t Google sell your porn history to the Saudis and Russians? Is your use of their search engine/apps going to change if they do? Even if it does, does it effect their sales? Are they actually going to be held accountable for their scumbag actions? Why should they give the slightest FUCK about you, if you’re never going to cause a problem for them?
No. They’re not.
lonewalk@lemm.ee 1 year ago
I’m not really sure what to make of this - I’ve been hearing people both bring up that he sold stock in isolation, and I’ve heard others say this is part of a routine pre-planned stock sale. Presuming he’s not performing obvious inside trading, I imagine it’s the latter.
I know capitalism bad and unity CEO bad, but is there actually anything to this? If not, why does this keep getting brought up? (I mean this as an actual question, not loaded)
FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I’m not a financial expert, but in my layperson opinion, I’d say at the very least, it is suspicious and needs to be investigated.
lonewalk@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Going by this commenter this seems like a nothing burger.
Obviously, fuck this CEO for all he’s having occur to Unity, but the stock sale doesn’t ultimately seem that important or relevant.
wmassingham@lemmy.world 1 year ago
There’s nothing to this individual sale, it’s just “CEO bad”. Given that apparently he’s had a bunch of sales planned for a while, it suggests he thinks the share price isn’t going to increase over that time.
foggy@lemmy.world 1 year ago
This should be beyond illegal.
This kind of white collar crime should be punishable in days for dollars.
abfarid@startrek.website 1 year ago
Afaik, it is. This news is blown out of proportion. Getting an approval to sell your shares takes like half a year, so these were actually sold way in advance. And he sold basically a couple of shares, compared to what he still holds. They are still scummy, but this is just an attention grabbing article.
AllonzeeLV@lemmy.world 1 year ago
The saddest bit is the staggering numbers of Americans who insist our economy isn’t completely rigged against them and rigged for existing capital holders.
They’re the poor deluded bastards that keep us stuck in it.
Blackdoomax@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
He knows.
kibiz0r@midwest.social 1 year ago
Why do we let execs sell stock received as compensation at all?
AlwaysNowNeverNotMe@kbin.social 1 year ago
They literally take out tax free loans with the stocks as collateral. Dodging the entire capital gains system.
wmassingham@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Because stock you can’t sell is worthless.
kibiz0r@midwest.social 1 year ago
It’s worth whatever it sells for when you resign. Which, if you did a good job, is way more than what it would’ve sold for the day you got it.
30mag@lemmy.world 1 year ago
So, these guys thought that this move would be bad for the company, so they sold off stock. It’s crooked, but I understand that.
I don’t understand why you would move forward with the change in dev fees or whatever if you think it is going to be bad for the business.
567PrimeMover@kbin.social 1 year ago
Because for some reason, our entire economy is built on short term profit rather than longevity and stability.
30mag@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I don’t think this is good for the short-term, or these guys wouldn’t be dumping stock.
Guest_User@lemmy.world 1 year ago
They likely think it will be bad in the short term.
tamtt@feddit.uk 1 year ago
How is this not insider trading?
Kichae@kbin.social 1 year ago
Because it's scheduled. He probably just has a "sell all of my stock bonuses as I receive them" order to his broker. If he doesn't actually get involved in the day-to-day decision making of his stock portfolio, then there's no special knowledge involved in the sale.
vivadanang@lemm.ee 1 year ago
he didn’t have control over the trades, but he controlled the timing of the announcement entirely.
they knew since june (when the TOS was edited), but waited until last week to drop their stinker of a plan after everyone had already cashed out what they wanted to.
almightysnoo above posted this, which I think is revealing:
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.
tamtt@feddit.uk 1 year ago
That makes sense. Thought there would be a reasonable explanation for it.
YurkshireLad@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
Did he also update his resume, book a moving company and buy a first class plane ticket?
AlmightySnoo@lemmy.world 1 year ago
It’s a low amount though (2000*36=€72k). What is more concerning is his 50,610 shares that he sold in total this year, as now that is a fairly big amount if he planned this move months ago.
To be fair, these guys are much more suspicious:
StarServal@kbin.social 1 year ago
I’m glad to see some light being shined on the taint rather than it all on the asshole.
Tibert@compuverse.uk 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.
Copernican@lemmy.world 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.
vivadanang@lemm.ee 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 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.