Exec sell-off = GOOG price slump?

Reported in The Australian:

WONDERING why your investment in Google has lost 18 per cent since the shares peaked at about $US475 in January?

...Its managers have dumped a truckload of stock since February 14, 2005, the expiration date of the biggest and final restriction on insider sales following its initial public offering. As of August 9, they had sold almost 23 million shares.

That means Google's top executives offloaded about $US7.4 billion of stock, equal to about a third of the company's starting market value when it sold shares at $US85 each in the August 2004 IPO.2

Nevertheless, it is remarkable that not one Google insider has bought a share of the company in the 18 months since the IPO lock-ups expired, according to data compiled by Bloomberg from the Washington Service, which tracks insider sales.

Philip Remek at Guzman and Co is the only equity analyst with a "sell" rating on Google. You could argue that he's not such a lone wolf, given the behavior of the company's owners.

...Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who founded the company, have led the exodus.

Page's share sales have sucked about $US2 billion out of the market, while Brin has pocketed a bit more than $US1.9 billion.

To be fair, if I had $12 billion GOOG, and I didn't receive a salary, and I came from humble beginnings, and the stock is in an industry notorious for wild price swings & over-exuberant investors, selling just $2B of my shares over 18 months seems quite expected and normal. At that rate it would take 9 years to sell them all...

I'm very impressed that someone I have never heard of, who is only a VP, can achieve this:

Omid Kordestani, the company's senior vice-president of sales, has sold $US1.1 billion of stock.