Wealthy Investors Reap $1 Billion from Surge in Stock Market Values

Ultra-Wealthy Investors Sell Off Stocks Worth Over $1 Billion Amid Record Highs

Members of the world's super-rich have been electing to take cash off the table as stocks repeatedly test new highs, offloading more than $1 billion of shares in recent weeks. A scion of Germany's Viessmann dynasty, Max Viessmann, sold about $750 million of Carrier Global Corp., a Florida-based maker of air conditioning equipment, last week. Meanwhile, Danish tycoon Henrik Lind offloaded the equivalent of roughly $175 million in facility manager ISS A/S.

Chris Ellison, founder of Mineral Resources Ltd., pocketed A$122.5 million ($87 million) from the sale of about 10% of his stake in the Australian mining services business this month, his first sale in that holding for almost a decade. The transactions offer a snapshot into how wealthy private investors are locking in returns in larger positions as global stock indexes hit record highs despite geopolitical turmoil, fueled by enthusiasm for AI and rising corporate earnings. Banks including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. believe stocks have further to go, even as some investors are worrying that values look overstretched.

Other ultra-wealthy individuals paring bets include Pamela Wall, whose late husband co-founded Australian technology company Codan Ltd. She cut her stake in the firm by almost a quarter at the start of May in a roughly A$312 million block trade, with the proceeds set to support her philanthropic activity, according to a regulatory filing. The investors are "reducing single-name risk," said Marc Debois, founder of FO-Next, an advisory firm for ultra-wealthy families and their investment firms, calling it a "disciplined decision."

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Publicly traded equities are typically the largest strategic allocation in the portfolios of investment firms for the ultra-wealthy, UBS Group AG said in a report last year. Fund managers are now the most overweight on equity allocations since early 2022, Bank of America Corp. said this month, leaving them close to triggering the lender's sell signal. Publicly traded shares in MinRes have risen more than 230% since December 2017, the month that the company said that Ellison had most recently cut his stake before this month's sale, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

Wall plans to keep her remaining Codan shares for at least another 12 months, while Ellison's sale proceeds will support him creating a family office to help manage a fortune that's still largely tied to his stake in the mining business, other filings show. They're "preserving optionality and redeploying capital on their own terms," Debois said.