Ann: Sale of Shares by Directors to Institutional Investors, page-124

"I can’t wrap my head around the need to sell down exactly 50% of their holdings"

Simply put, the capital gain from exercising their options would have been (for tax purposes) about 25 cents (27 cents - 2 cents exercise cost). That's a single-transaction of income of $22.5 million, which is going to be taxed. They're operating through trusts or funds so let's assume they're paying 30% tax on the income. That comes to a tax bill of $6.76 million. To cover that at 20 cents they would have to sell 33.8 million shares. On top of that they have to cover the $1.8 million they had to cough up to exercise the options in the first place. At 20 cents that would take another 9 million shares for a total of nearly 43 million shares. Does that sound like about the right number?

Given the effect on the share price of disposing only 15 million shares today, I think we should all agree that the actions taken were prudent and responsible.