Tencent’s Ma Sells Stock at Discount After 2009 Contract
March 31, 2011, 5:37 AM EDTBy Mark Lee
(Closes shares in fifth paragraph.)
March 31 (Bloomberg) -- Tencent Holdings Ltd. said Chief Executive Officer Ma Huateng disposed some of his shares in China’s biggest Internet company by revenue at a discount, having agreed to a sale price two years ago.
Ma sold 2 million Tencent shares at an average price of HK$67.81 apiece on March 28, according to a Hong Kong stock exchange filing yesterday. That is a more than 65 percent less than the stock’s closing price of HK$195.20 yesterday.
The sale price has “no relevance to the current price and outlook,” Catherine Chan, a spokeswoman at Tencent, said by phone today.
Tencent dropped the most in two weeks in Hong Kong trading today while the benchmark Hang Seng Index gained. The so-called “caller transaction” agreement required the billionaire executive to sell the securities at a pre-determined price when the contract is due, she said.
The stock fell 2.9 percent to HK$189.50, the biggest decline since March 17. Hong Kong’s benchmark Hang Seng Index rose 0.3 percent.
Ma’s holdings in Tencent dropped to 11.05 percent from 11.16 percent after this week’s sale, the filing showed. Chan declined to say if Ma is under contract for further share disposals.
--Editors: Anand Krishnamoorthy, Young-Sam Cho.
To contact the reporter on this story: Mark Lee in Hong Kong at wlee37@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Young-Sam Cho at ycho2@bloomberg.net
