As a legal matter, no, he can't really sell his shares when he feels like it. (Disclaimer: IANAL and this is not advice.) The Spotify insider trading policy [1]

As a legal matter, no, he can't really sell his shares when he feels like it. (Disclaimer: IANAL and this is not advice.) The Spotify insider trading policy [1] prohibits transactions during "blackout periods," which start with the last month of the fiscal quarter (so December 1, in this case) and end after earnings are released. These share sales were presumably executed pursuant to a 10b5-1 plan, so he did something like set up a target price ahead of time at which he would sell. It just so happened that the plan was triggered when the stock surged on news of layoffs. I don't think the optics are great there! But it's at least sort of a coincidence. [1] https://s29.q4cdn.com/175625835/files/doc_downloads/gov-docs/Insider-Trading-Policy-(IR).pdf https://s29.q4cdn.com/175625835/files/doc_downloads/gov-docs...