After markets reacted with concern Wednesday morning over Barnes & Noble chairman Len Riggio’s block sales of 2 million shares in the company, he explained to the WSJ that the “tax planning” indicated in his SEC filing really meant he wanted to book an easy paper loss. So Riggio didn’t really care what price the shares were sold for. Selling converted a paper loss of about $40 million into an actual tax writeoff worth real money. As far as the government is concerned, he was selling shares that he acquired at what a spokesperson said was an average price of […]
