It’s hardly a hand-off to the next Jeff Bezos, but the timing of New York Times chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr.’s sale of a portion of his stock is rather ironic: He sold off 50,000 shares in the company one day after sending out a memo that promised, unequivocally: “The Times is not for sale.” The sale, at $12 a share, earned Sulzberger Jr. $600,000, according to The Wall Street Journal. It represented a small portion of Sulzberger Jr.’s overall investment in the Times, which now includes 173,675 class A shares he owns directly, 851,000 stock options, and “several million class A and B shares held through a family trust, according to SEC filings.” Times spokeswoman Eileen Murphy told the Times the sale was part of Sulzberger Jr.’s normal estate planning, and said, “personally, he is still very invested in Times Company stock.” Just a little bit less so now.
