billionaires: Query

Marco Anglesio mpa at the-wire.com
Thu Jun 24 12:25:30 PDT 1999



> A query. If Bezos wanted to realize his wealth (transform it, say, into
> other securities) how much of it could he realize without knocking its
> value way down? If he sells very many of thos shares quickly,
> wouldn't it knock the bottom out of the price?

IIRC, many rich net stock owners are operating mostly on future expectations rather than present revenue. What's more, many own a huge part of the stock themselves, so the price rises on the shortage of stock. That said, it wouldn't fall all the way down to zero; Amazon is among the few internet concerns to be making money, and that must count for something.


> Just curious. Same question for all those whose wealth is all or mostly
> in the shares of just one company. I imagine Bill Gates by this time
> has a few Billion "diversified."

True. And when he moves money around, as likely as not it's Microsoft stock rather than cold hard cash changing hands. He might have a liquidity problem if MS runs into trouble with the DoJ; of course, what the split of Standard Oil did was turn a paper-rich John D. Rockefeller into a cash-rich John D. Rockefeller.

Marco

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