The donations of shares made by Eric S. Yuan, the founder and CEO of the video conferencing platform star Zoom, represent around 6% of his company's capital.
According to the Wall Street Journal, which was able to consult official documents from the American financial regulator, the wealthy leader made two donations of nine million Zoom shares each, to two beneficiaries whose identity is unknown.
At 337 dollars the Zoom Video Communication share (its closing price on March 8), this represents a sum of approximately 6 billion dollars.
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Eric S. Yuan previously held 15% of the capital and 40% of the voting rights of the company he founded in 2011. According to the Wall Street Journal, he would therefore only have 9% of the capital and a little less than 27% of the voting rights.
"Estate plan"
In the United States, this transfer of participation is permitted by a financial instrument used by members of the same family to avoid certain taxes.
According to a spokesperson for the company, this transfer is in line with "
the estate plan
" of 51-year-old Eric Yuan.
After a phenomenal year 2020 for his company, whose name has even entered into common parlance for videoconferencing, Eric S. Yuan entered the Forbes ranking of the “400 richest Americans” last year with an estimated fortune. to $ 13.7 billion.
He has three children.
In 2020, Zoom Video Communication gained 385,000 new business customers, its turnover jumped 327% to $ 2.65 billion and its net profit was multiplied by 26 to reach $ 672 million!
Result: the valuation of the group that went public in 2019 has been multiplied by 4 in 2020, and now reaches 120 billion dollars.
It employs more than 3,800 people around the world.
