Facebook COO David Ebersman Sold $43 Million Facebook Shares

Facebook COO David Ebersman has $42.6 million more in cash to his name right now. He sold 911,700 shares of Facebook stock on Tuesday, the third largest trade by a Facebook insider in about three months.

The trade was pre-scheduled, so it doesn't reflect on Facebook's business. It just shows off the kind of wealth Facebook has created for some of its employees as the stock trades above $45. He still holds 650,962 share in his name, and just shifted 1.4 million more into trust for his family, according to SEC documents.

But that wasn't the biggest cash-out this month. Facebook board member and investor Marc Andreessen sold 1.2 million shares when the stock reached above $49 on November 6 for $59.5 million.

You have to go back to August 7 to find a bigger payday. That's when Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg sold about 2.4 million shares at $38+ for $91.3 million, also as a scheduled transaction. She's had a few other transactions since then, including selling $8.3 million worth of stock in September.

Those 1,600 Twitter employees have to be watching this sort of thing and biting their nails. They need to get through their lock-up period, when they are free to sell their Twitter stock, before they can turn their stock into cash.