vitanola
I'll Lock Up
- Messages
- 4,254
- Location
- Gopher Prairie, MI
One of the hardest things in the world to do is to get someone who has most of their money tied up in one very successful company (usually they worked there, got the stock over decades as compensation and never sold a share - and they were lucky to have worked for a company that did well and grew much larger over that time) to diversify (sell some of the shares of that company and buy a broader mix of assets) to protect their financial well being from that one company failing at some point in the future.
I sold my little telecom firm to WorldCom in '97. Received a big (to me) block of stock which was my primary compensation. Before I could re-deploy my assets MCI was absorbed by Worldcom, and under the terms of the merger my stock was tied up until 2004. Like many other shareholders I could take dividends but could not sell more than a small percentage of my holdings until then. Then came March of '02...