SiriusXM Radio CEO Mel Karmazin has begun exercising options and selling the shares to fund his charitable endeavors, as announced last month. The pot of money for charity is already pretty big – and he’s just begun.
Karmazin exercised 11,480,700 options at a price of 43 cents each on April 16th and 17th – just the beginning of the 60 million shares he plans to sell after exercising options to fund his philanthropic efforts.
On the 16th Karmazin exercised 5,965,800 options for a total of $2,565,294 – then immediately sold the shares for $13,024,534.56 for a cash take of $10,459,240.56.
The next day he exercised 5,514,900 options for $2,371,407 and immediately sold the stock for $12,297,675.51 for a take of $9,926,268.51.
So, the two transactions netted $20,385,509.07 for Karmazin to begin passing out cash to his favorite charities.
The CEO still holds 108,519,300 stock options at the 43-cent strike price. He’ll still have over 48.5 million options after completing the charity fund-raising. Those options all expire the last day of 2014, so he still has some time to figure out what to do with them.
RBR-TVBR observation: Despite the New York Times article griping about Karmazin’s payoff, he’s still not making as much from his work at SiriusXM as Howard Stern.
