Former U.S. vice president Al Gore – a director on Apple’s board – has just exercised a big chunk of his Apple (AAPL) stock options.
According to a filing with the Securities and Exchanges Commission, Mr. Gore, who just recently raked in a reported $100 million from the sale of his cable station to Qatar-based news organization Al Jazeera, exercised options on January 15 to purchase nearly 60,000 Apple shares at the excellent price of $7.48 each.
Apple closed at $500 per share on Friday. This means Gore’s acquisition of $441,000 was instantly worth a cool $30 million. Not bad for attending a board meeting few times a year.
This isn’t the first time Gore has exercised his option to buy Apple stock for just pennies on the dollar. According to The Next Web, in January and March of 2008 the former U.S. vice president, whose personal net worth is reputed to be $300 million, purchased 60,000 Apple shares for the same price. At that time, the ticker was trading for about $124 a share.
The man who didn’t invent the Internet still has more than 61,000 Apple share options available that he can exercise at bargain-basement price.
