Warm Reception on Wall Street Makes AECOM Stock Golden
As most employee investors now know, one lesson of the Enron debacle in 2001 was never to keep too much of your own money tied up in your company’s stock. Last month, on May 10, hundreds of employees of AECOM Technology Corp. sold off $223 million worth of stock, after commissions and discounts for underwriters, during the company’s initial public offering. More significantly, thousands of other employee-shareholders held on to a far greater portion of AECOM stock, worth more than $1 billion. Frederick W. Werner, CEO of the Los Angeles-based firm’s Americas Transportation Group, sold only 11,061 of his 371,444 total shares.
For some, the feeling of financial security and the possibility of much greater gains in the future by selling stock on the open market was palpable. According to one source, when the wife of one company manager had her wallet stolen during a trip just after the IPO, her husband consoled her this way: “We just made it up on AECOM stock.”