Facebook (FB) Insiders Dumped $9.8B Worth of Shares Leaving Investors Holding The Bag

Now that Facebook’s (FB) stock has lost almost half its value, trading below $20, after a $38 initial public offering, it’s time to compliment Facebook insiders who timed their sales of company stock almost to perfection and secured their gains way better than retail investors.

Below is the list of the Facebook elite who sold on the IPO while demand for the social network shares was at a frenzy, and whom — considering the company’s almost $50 billion dollars loss in value since coming public — look now, well, quite smart and perceptive. This however, raises objectively the question that if you had inside knowledge on a ticker’s potential spike two to three quarters from now, why would you sell your stake?!!!  Doesn’t selling, or rather dumping of the pre-IPO shares — Facebook insiders dumped 241 million shares for $9.8 billion on IPO day — signals to the public that they didn’t have enough confidence in the company’s fundamentals to keep most of their skin in the game?

While I’d hate to think  that some people knew something they didn’t care to share with the suckers who bought on the IPO, the list of insiders — including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and chairman of Linked Reid Hoffman, Goldman Sachs Group (GS), Microsoft Corp (MS) and the VC firm Accel Partners — reads like a who’s who list of the well-connected investment community.

Here are some additional insider names — people who helped start Facebook ; both employees and venture capitalists — that cashed out significant holdings on the day of the IPO and who again have made out quite well relative to the rest of the retail investors.

[via BusinessInsider]:

• Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, sold 30.2 million shares for $1.14 billion

• Accel Partners, an early Facebook investor, sold 57.7 million shares for $2.1 billion

• Peter Thiel, a very early Facebook investor, sold 16.8 million shares for $638 million

• DST Global, a Russian investment fund, sold 45.7 million shares for $1.7 billion

• Goldman Sachs, a Facebook investor, sold 24.3 million shares for $923 million

• Elevation Partners, a Facebook investor, sold 4.6 million shares for $175 million

• Greylock Partners, a Facebook investor, sold 7.6 million shares for $289 million

• Mail.ru Group, a Russian Internet company, sold 19.6 million shares for $745 million

• Mark Pincus, the CEO of Zynga, sold 1 million shares for $38 million. Mr. Pincus also dumped stock in Zynga in April, right before that stock crashed.

• Meritech Capital sold 7 million shares for $266 million

• Microsoft, a Facebook partner and investor, sold 6.6 million shares for $250 million

• Tiger Global, a hedge fund, sold 19 million shares for $722 million

• Reid Hoffman, a Silicon Valley investor, sold 943,000 shares for $36 million

In aggregate, Facebook insiders dumped 241 million shares for $9.8 billion.

Those shares are now worth $4.8 billion.

Yes, all of these Facebook insiders still own a lot of Facebook stock, so they’re all getting gobsmacked by the collapse.

But still…

Nice timing!

Facebook shares closed on Friday at $21.09, up $1.05, or 5.24%.