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Larry Page, the co-founder of Google and one of the richest people in the world, plans to sell about $148 million of Alphabet Inc. stock through trusts linked to him.
The trusts gave notice of the proposed sale on Nov. 13. The shares are a mix of Alphabet's Class A stock, which trades under the ticker GOOGL, and its Class C stock, which trades as GOOG. The sales will be made under a Rule 10b5-1 plan first set up in 2020.
A 10b5-1 plan lets company insiders fix the timing and size of share sales in advance. The rule is meant to protect executives and large shareholders from claims that they traded on information the market did not have.
The notice is the latest in a series of share sales by Page's trusts. Page's remaining holding in the company is far larger than any single sale, and the $148 million block is a small slice of it.
A quiet controlling shareholder
Page, 53, started Google with Sergey Brin in 1998 while the two were doctoral students at Stanford University. The search engine grew into the world's dominant gateway to the internet and the base of a business that now spans online advertising, YouTube, Android, cloud computing and artificial intelligence.
Google reorganized under the Alphabet holding company in 2015, with Page as chief executive. He stepped down from the role in December 2019, handing it to Sundar Pichai, who was already running Google.
Page and Brin no longer run the company day to day, but they remain its controlling shareholders. Their power rests on Alphabet's Class B shares, which carry 10 votes each and do not trade on the stock market. That structure gives the two founders a majority of the voting power while owning a minority of the company's total equity.
Page has kept a low public profile since leaving the CEO post. Most of his fortune is tied to his Alphabet stake, and the value of that holding moves with the company's share price.
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