Executives of McDonald's Corp. sold more than 349,000 shares of their company stock in the first quarter of this year, nearly 31/2 times what they unloaded in the same period a year earlier, it was reported today.
All told, the officers, who include senior chairman Fred Turner and chief financial officer Jack Greenberg, sold more than $10 million in stock in the first quarter, The Wall Street Journal reported.In addition, Joan Kroc, the widow of company founder Ray Kroc, sold at least 2 million shares.
The insider selling by McDonald's officials exceeded that at any of the 29 other companies included in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the newspaper said. By comparison, officials of Sears, Roebuck & Co., which is experiencing some hard times, sold 2,100 shares of Sears stocks in the same period.
In the first quarter, at least 20 McDonald's officers sold 349,263 of the company's shares, up 345 percent from the year-earlier period, not including options-related transactions, the paper said.
A spokesman with the Oak Brook-based company did not immediately return phone calls. But company officials reached by the newspaper said their sales did not represent a lack of confidence in the company's financial future.
"I don't sense a lack of confidence at all," said Greenberg, who the paper said has sold 13,200 shares since May 1990, 4,000 in the first quarter of 1991. He said he sold the stock in order to buy a new house.