Twitter CEO's trusts cut holdings further

San Francisco

TWITTER chief executive officer Dick Costolo's family trusts halved their stake in the social network again, as the executive's sales accelerate. After the sale, the trusts have a quarter of the Twitter stock they held in early November. The Richard Costolo 2001 Living Trust and Lorin Costolo 2001 Living Trust, named for his wife, sold 141,730 shares in transactions on Dec 1 for US$5.68 million, according to a regulatory filing on Wednesday. The trusts now own 141,730 shares. On Nov 3 and Nov 17, the trusts sold 283,460 shares for US$11.6 million, filings showed.

Mr Costolo has been taking steps to diversify his investments after holding on to all his shares in the microblogging service's initial public offering. He still owns 36,028 shares in the company directly and 509,828 unvested restricted stock units after the share sale. Until July, the CEO and his family trusts hadn't sold a single share of Twitter stock. That month, he sold 16,698 shares, followed by 20,106 shares in October. "Dick's stock sales were done in accordance with a trading plan put on file 90 days ago to help him diversify his investments over time," Jim Prosser, a Twitter spokesman, said in an e-mailed statement.