Inside out

19 May 2006 By Rob Cox Follow @rob1cox

As investment banking stocks have soared, top dogs at Lehman, Merrill and Goldman have quietly been selling out. They’re not alone. Evercore is going public. Greenhill and Weisel completed secondary offerings. Are they signaling something?

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Thomas Weisel Partners Group sold $118m of stock on Thursday at $22 a share. About half of the shares were new and the rest were sold by the San Francisco's broker's managers. Founder Tom Weisel was not one of the selling shareholders.

A week earlier, the partners of Greenhill, the mergers advisory firm by Robert Greenhill, sold 3.5m shares at $71 each for a total of $250m.

Last month, Lloyd Blankfein, president of Goldman Sachs, sold $1.7m of stock; and vice chairman Suzanne Nora Johnson sold $6.9m of stock. So far this year, chief financial officer David Viniar raised more than $8m selling stock, Capital IQ reports.

Lehman Brothers president Joseph Gregory sold $21m of stock in March, adding to the $26m he sold in late January. Chief executive Richard Fuld sold $18m in March. Chief financial officer Chris O'Meara sold $1.2m in April, according to Capital IQ.

Merrill Lynch chief executive Stanley O'Neal sold $11m of stock in February. Dow Kim and Greg Fleming, who run the investment, respectively sold $2.4m and $500,000.

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