Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella sold stock worth about $300 million last week, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. He sold around 840,000 shares in the software business over two days, according to a disclosure last week. 

According to a federal securities filing, Microsoft Corp. Chief Executive Satya Nadella sold about half of his shares in the company last week.

The Redmond, Wash.-based software business revealed Mr. Nadella sold 838,584 shares over two days in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission last week, down from over 1.7 million shares. 

Mr. Nadella received more than $285 million as a result of the deal. According to InsiderScore, this is Mr. Nadella's largest single stock sale.

In a written statement, a Microsoft spokeswoman said, 'Satya sold roughly 840,000 shares of his holdings of Microsoft stock for personal financial planning and diversification reasons.' 'He is committed to the company's continued success, and his holdings much surpass the Microsoft Board of Directors' holding standards.'

Analysts speculated that the move was motivated by Washington state's decision to impose a 7% tax on long-term capital gains for anybody earning more than $250,000 per year beginning in January of next year.

Mr. Nadella has engineered a turnaround in Microsoft's prospects and rebuilt the company into one of the most vital in the world since taking over as CEO in 2014, focusing the company on cloud computing and selling to large organisations. The company's market valuation has increased by 780 percent since he was appointed CEO, to $2.53 trillion.

As additional firms sought out the company's solutions to support remote work during the epidemic, the company's growth accelerated even quicker. Its stock has increased by more than 50% this year. In June, Mr. Nadella was named chairman of Microsoft's board of directors.

On Monday afternoon, Microsoft shares were trading at $337.31, up 2.3 percent.

InsiderScore's director of research, Ben Silverman, compared the sale to Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk's recent stock sales. Mr. Musk resorted to Twitter to express himself.

this month, he promised to divest 10% of his stock holdings. Mr. Silverman claimed that the Tesla CEO was profiting from the company's stock price increase.

On the Wednesday before the lengthy Thanksgiving weekend, Mr. Nadella's transaction was made public.

Mr. Silverman explained, 'There's a lot of savvy going on with the superrich in terms of trying not to startle the stock while taking advantage of market froth and getting ahead of tax-code changes.'