Unity bosses sold stock days before development fees announcement

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 747 points –
Unity bosses sold stock days before development fees announcement, raising eyebrows
eurogamer.net

Unity bosses sold stock days before development fees announcement::Unity executives sold thousands of shares in the weeks leading up to last night's hugely controversial announcement it …

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Sounds illegal to me.

unfortunately there is a massive loophole that allows them to do this. what they do is set up sell orders at regular intervals (once a month or whatever) for months or years in advance. then when they decide they dont want to sell, they just cancel the order which is totally fine for them to do for some reason. if they do want to sell they just let the order execute and if anyone asks, they set it up a year ago and there is no possibility that the current decision could have influenced them into making that sell order a year ago.

I guess it would be best to change the rules so that they cannot trade their company stocks at all while working there and a reasonable period beyond. I think some legislations already restrict floating stock like that but I'm no expert on the matter.

That would make stocks a form of retirement, not a work compensation.

How about that you can sell the stocks, with an uncancellable order a year in advance?

Good point.

I guess just having a staggered temporal restriction is fine, don't need to wait until you retire necessarily. You would still receive a portion of your salary package in the form of classic currency and plenty for a good life too. An example could look like this and I'm obviously making up the percentages and durations here, they would need to be fine tuned:

  • 40% of salary as cash
  • 10% of salary as stocks that can't be sold within 6 months
  • 10% of salary as stocks that can't be sold within 12 months
  • 10% of salary as stocks that can't be sold within 18 months
  • 10% of salary as stocks that can't be sold within 24 months
  • 10% of salary as stocks that can't be sold within 30 months
  • 10% of salary as stocks that can't be sold within 36 months

When the homies fix corporate compensation by inventing RSUs 😎💰