As chief financial officer of Goldman Sachs Group, David Viniar has had plenty of practice handling large sums of cash. That experience should be serving him well this year as he takes in more than a quarter-million US dollars a day from the sale of his own stock in the firm.
Viniar is one of several Goldman Sachs executives and former partners who have been selling thousands of shares of Goldman stock in daily increments since last fall. Last week, Goldman filed notice with the Securities and Exchange Commission that Viniar and 38 other insiders planned to sell about 1.5 million shares in the next three months.
Viniar's planned sale of 100,000 shares would raise the total number he has sold since late September to about 337,000 shares, leaving him with more than 1 million shares. Viniar and the other insiders received their shares after Goldman converted from a private partnership to a public company two years ago.
So far, the proceeds from Viniar's sales have amounted, day by day, to about US$25 million. The shares he said he planned to sell this quarter would be worth another US$8.4 million at Tuesday's closing price of US$84.
A spokeswoman for the firm said that the insider sales were part of an "ongoing" program of "orderly" sales. Last month, Viniar described his reasons for selling shares as personal and said company stock would continue to account for the bulk of his wealth after the sales.
"I have tremendous confidence in the firm," Viniar said, despite the gloomy short-term outlook he painted for Goldman and other investment banks when he discussed the firm's quarterly earnings last month.
At that time, the underwriter of initial public offerings and a top adviser on mergers, said the steep drop in sales of new stocks and the slowdown in merger activity combined to push its second-quarter earnings down 24 percent, to US$577 million.
Viniar declined to discuss how he was dealing with the daily flow of so much cash into his personal accounts. Every day from the beginning of January through early May, he cashed out of shares worth between US$212,000 and US$313,000. A similar pattern of sales was expected to begin again this month.
Other Goldman executives, including Leslie Tortora, who oversees the firm's information technology, and Robert J. Hurst, who is vice chairman, have made daily sales of several hundred to a few thousand shares this year. But neither Henry M. Paulson, the firm's chief executive, nor either of its co-presidents, John A. Thain and John L. Thornton, has been among them.
Among others registering their intention to sell shares was the Corzine Blind Trust, an investment fund being managed on behalf of Jon S. Corzine, the former chairman of Goldman. The Corzine trust filed to sell 275,840 shares, making it the single biggest seller on the list for this quarter.
Corzine said last month that he had sold about one-fourth of the 4.4 million Goldman shares he owned. He said he expected the managers of his blind trust to sell the rest of his shares over the next couple of years.
Varying numbers of Goldman insiders have been filing to sell some of their shares each quarter since last fall. The current group is the smallest so far, down from more than 200 in previous quarters.
Goldman was scheduled to deliver another 6 million shares of stock to its employees this quarter as part of their compensation packages, Viniar said. To offset the issuance of those shares, the firm has been buying back its shares in the public market.
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