Billionaire Peter Thiel Sells A Majority Of His Remaining Facebook Stake

Billionaire investor Peter Thiel sold a majority of his remaining stake in Facebook Inc. FB last Thursday, a regulatory filing with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission has shown.

What Happened

The Paypal Holdings Inc. PYPL founder sold 53,602 shares he held in the social media company in two transactions, to be left with 9,948 shares, worth about $2.1 million at press time.

Thiel was the first outside investor in Facebook back in 2004 and has been an influential advisor to the company's chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg since.

The venture capitalist is said to be an influence behind Facebook's insistence on not fact-checking political advertisements, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Thiel, who also founded the data analytics company Palantir Technologies, sold a majority of the 45 million shares he held in the company in 2012 as the post-IPO lockup period expired.

The shares would have been worth about $9.6 billion at press time. Thiel's net worth is $2.3 billion, according to Forbes.

Price Action

Facebook's shares traded marginally higher at $213.30 in the after-hours session on Monday.

Photo Credit: Public domain photo via Wikimedia.