What Gasoil Inc. is

[Original story here: [Who the hell is Gasoil Inc](http://owt.typepad.com/blog/2005/01/who_the_hell_is.html)]

I might have a solution for the questions around that company. Of course only those that set up the company can know for sure, but I now have two different people telling me something very similar and I believe it. First of all this is really a company set up in agreement with the underwriters of the IPO to allow the founders to sell a little bit of shares. Obviously the banks want the company to sell stock, because that puts money in the hands of the company, but sometimes the founders or key staff want to get a little bit of cash for buying a Ferrari too, which is where this kind of stuff comes from. This kind of stuff seems to be very common around IPOs and is just how it is.

A bit more information came to me via Serge Faguet (he commented on this blog) who did some research on Venture Capital and IPOs at Cornell and also asked a Professor who teaches IPOs at the business school. Based on his information, or guess however you want to put it, Gasoil Inc is _a 10b5–1 plan set up to sell stock by insiders every month on a predetermined schedule_. That way there is no insider problem as the insiders are not selling themselves. So we will likely see more sales of Gasoil Inc shares in the future on some standard day. Maybe every 6 months, maybe every year. We will see. They don’t seem to be selling too much via the setup, but it’s still a bit weird, … but fully legal and ok with all the key people. :)