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Peter Thiel Whittles Down His Facebook Stake to Just $2 Million

Peter Thiel Whittles Down His Facebook Stake to Just $2 Million

(Bloomberg) -- Billionaire Peter Thiel, an early investor in Facebook Inc. who once controlled 45 million shares of the social-media giant, unloaded most of his remaining stake last week.

Thiel, a member of Facebook’s board, sold 53,602 shares held by his Rivendell One LLC for $11 million, leaving him with about $2 million of stock, according to a regulatory filing Friday.

The transactions are the latest in a series of sales in recent years that have left Thiel with just 9,948 directly held shares. He sold most of his stake in 2012.

Shares of Menlo Park, California-based Facebook climbed 27% in the past year through Friday, making co-founder Mark Zuckerberg the world’s fifth-richest person, with an $81 billion fortune, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Thiel, 52, has a net worth of $3.4 billion, including a stake in data analytics company Palantir Technologies Inc.

To contact the reporter on this story: Tom Metcalf in London at tmetcalf7@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Pierre Paulden at ppaulden@bloomberg.net, Peter Eichenbaum, Steven Crabill

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