Masimo’s billionaire CEO put shares on margin to get cash while keeping ownership ahead of proxy fight
Founder and CEO of Masimo, Joe Kiani addresses a press conference in Bangalore on January 2, 2017.
Manjunath Kiran | Afp | Getty Images
Billionaire Masimo founder Joe Kiani, best known for his successful legal fight against Apple and his friendship with President Joe Biden, has borrowed against half of his $660 million stake in the health-technology company rather than sell his stock, according to corporate filings from earlier this week.
Borrowing against that much of a stake is unusual for executives, but may be helpful as the company prepares for a fight with an activist aiming to take control of the board. The move allows Kiani, the company’s CEO and chairman, to maintain his stake and voting power while also getting money he says he needs for family reasons.
Many medical-tech peers bar such moves, and it could leave Kiani susceptible to margin calls if Masimo’s stock falls below a certain threshold. Kiani has just under 4 million Masimo shares, or around 7.5% of the company, according to FactSet data.
Masimo, which makes wearables and health monitoring products, is preparing to fend off a second proxy fight waged by Quentin Koffey’s Politan Capital Management. Kiani described Koffey as “destructive” in a March CNBC interview.
Masimo shares are up 15% this year, lifting the company’s market cap past $7 billion. The stock had a volatile run in the back half of 2023, falling 47% in the third quarter before gaining 34% in the fourth.
Politan controls 8.9% of Masimo shares. While that’s bigger than Kiani’s stake, even before pledged shares are weighed, regulatory filings show that the CEO has options that could boost his holdings to 9.2% if exercised.
Politan already won two seats on Masimo’s six-person board in a contentious 2023 proxy fight, but announced last month that it would seek two more seats, including Kiani’s, to cement control.
Kiani, 59, pledged 2.97 million Masimo shares as of April, valued at $397 million, as collateral against “personal loans.” The company said in its annual filing Kiani had family “financial planning objectives” that would require him to sell his stock, but that he “did not want to diminish his shareholdings.” His objectives weren’t spelled out in the filings.
“The pledge of shares was pre-approved by the Board and reflects Mr. Kiani’s conviction in the value of Masimo stock despite the short-term decline in the stock price during the second half of 2023,” a Masimo spokesman said in an emailed statement. “Rather than sell his pledged shares, Mr. Kiani increased his pledge to maintain his stock ownership.”
The spokesperson added that Kiani purchased about $7 million worth of Masimo stock in the second half of 2022 and the first half of 2023.
The Masimo logo is displayed at Masimo headquarters on December 27, 2023 in Irvine, California.
Mario Tama | Getty Images
Kiani is a major Democratic donor who is reportedly close with President Biden. He also has an 8,000-acre winery in Santa Ynez, California, near Santa Barbara. The lending is an increase from the year before, when Kiani only pledged 400,000 shares as collateral.
Masimo’s board also includes Bob Chapek, who joined in January, almost exactly a year after was he ousted as Disney’s CEO.
Several of Masimo’s peers, like Agilent, Stryker and Medtronic, don’t allow executives to pledge their shares. Companies generally frown upon stock pledging, though some, including Masimo, permit it with board approval. Stock-backed lending, or “Lombard loans,” generally requires a borrower to sell their shares if they fall below a certain value, which in the case of large shareholders can drive a stock price down even further.
Masimo’s earlier proxy fight was marked by litigation between the two sides that led to Politan winning $18 million in legal fees after forcing the company to abandon an effort to thwart the investment firm. There were also personal attacks. In regulatory filings, the company described Koffey as someone with “hubris” that was “no different than his more prominent peer Bill Ackman.”
Major shareholders, including Vanguard, sided with the activist, which said that Masimo had been marred by poor governance practices and the acquisition of Sound United, a consumer audio company. Masimo shares plummeted 37% the day the deal was announced in February 2022.
Last month, Masimo said it would spin off its consumer business, an announcement that boosted the stock. When Politan announced its second campaign days later, shares rose even higher. Politan has said news of the spinoff, made after the bell on a Friday and shortly before the activist announced its second campaign, was “rushed” when the company learned of the activist’s plans.
Masimo has denied that claim. The company has yet to file a proxy statement or schedule an annual meeting.
Masimo has had some success in recent months. The company pursued high-profile patent litigation against Apple, alleging that the company infringed on its pulse oximeter technology for the Apple Watch. After some initial setbacks, Masimo won a ruling that restricted the sale of some watches. The two companies remain in negotiations on the matter.
WATCH: Masimo CEO Joe Kiani on consumer spinoff and proxy fight
Elon Musk, chief executive officer of Tesla Inc., during a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Cyril Ramaphosa, South Africa’s president, not pictured, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, May 21, 2025.
Jim Lo Scalzo | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Tesla shares have dropped 7% from Friday’s closing price of $323.63 to the $300.71 close on Tuesday ahead of the company’s second-quarter deliveries report.
Wall Street analysts are expecting Tesla to report deliveries of around 387,000 — a 13% decline compared to deliveries of nearly 444,000 a year ago, according to a consensus compiled by FactSet. Prediction market Kalshi told CNBC on Tuesday that its traders forecast deliveries of around 364,000.
Shares in the electric vehicle maker had been rising after Tesla started a limited robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, in late June and CEO Elon Musk boasted of its first “driverless delivery” of a car to a customer there.
The stock price took a turn after Musk on Saturday reignited a feud with President Donald Trump over the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the massive spending bill that the commander-in-chief endorsed. The bill is now heading for a final vote in the House.
That legislation would benefit higher-income households in the U.S. while slashing spending on programs such as Medicaid and food assistance.
Musk did not object to cuts to those specific programs. However, Musk on X said the bill would worsen the U.S. deficit and raise the debt ceiling. The bill includes tax cuts that would add around $3 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, according to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office.
The Tesla CEO has also criticized aspects of the bill that would cut hundreds of billions of dollars in support for renewable energy development in the U.S. and phase out tax credits for electric vehicles.
Such changes could hurt Tesla as they are expected to lower EV sales by roughly 100,000 vehicles per year by 2035, according to think tank Energy Innovation.
The bill is also expected to reduce renewable energy development by more than 350 cumulative gigawatts in that same time period, according to Energy Innovation. That could pressure Tesla’s Energy division, which sells solar and battery energy storage systems to utilities and other clean energy project developers.
Trump told reporters at the White House on Tuesday that Musk was, “upset that he’s losing his EV mandate,” but that the tech CEO could “lose a lot more than that.” Trump was alluding to the subsidies, incentives and contracts that Musk’s many businesses have relied on.
SpaceX has received over $22 billion from work with the federal government since 2008, according to FedScout, which does federal spending and government contract research. That includes contracts from NASA, the U.S. Air Force and Space Force, among others.
Tesla has reported $11.8 billion in sales of “automotive regulatory credits,” or environmental credits, since 2015, according to an evaluation of the EV maker’s financial filings by Geoff Orazem, CEO of FedScout.
These incentives are largely derived from federal and state regulations in the U.S. that require automakers to sell some number of low-emission vehicles or buy credits from companies like Tesla, which often have an excess.
Regulatory credit sales go straight to Tesla’s bottom line. Credit revenue amounted to approximately 60% of Tesla’s net income in the second quarter of 2024.
WATCH: Threats to SpaceX & Tesla as Musk, Trump feud heats up
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos leaves Aman Venice hotel, on the second day of the wedding festivities of Bezos and journalist Lauren Sanchez, in Venice, Italy, June 27, 2025.
Yara Nardi | Reuters
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos unloaded more than 3.3 million shares of his company in a sale valued at roughly $736.7 million, according to a financial filing on Tuesday.
The stock sale is part of a previously arranged trading plan adopted by Bezos in March. Under that arrangement, Bezos plans to sell up to 25 million shares of Amazon over a period ending May 29, 2026.
Bezos, who stepped down as Amazon’s CEO in 2021 but remains chairman, has been selling stock in the company at a regular clip in recent years, though he’s still the largest individual shareholder. He adopted a similar trading plan in February 2024 to sell up to 50 million shares of Amazon stock through late January of this year.
Bezos previously said he’d sell about $1 billion in Amazon stock each year to fund his space exploration company, Blue Origin. He’s also donated shares to Day 1 Academies, his nonprofit that’s building a chain of Montessori-inspired preschools across several states.
The most recent stock sale comes after Bezos and Lauren Sanchez tied the knot last week in a lavish wedding in Venice. The star-studded celebration, which took place over three days and sparked protests from some local residents, was estimated to cost around $50 million.
Bezos is ranked third in Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index with a net worth of about $240 billion. He’s behind Tesla CEO Elon Musk at $363 billion and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg at $260 billion.
WATCH: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ wedding sparks Venice protests
Google CEO Sundar Pichai addresses the crowd during Google’s annual I/O developers conference in Mountain View, California on May 20, 2025.
Camille Cohen | AFP | Getty Images
The Google Doodle is Alphabet’s most valuable piece of real estate, and on Tuesday, the company used that space to promote “AI Mode,” its latest AI search product.
Google’s Chrome browser landing pages and Google’s home page featured an animated image that, when clicked, leads users to AI Mode, the company’s latest search product. The doodle image also includes a share button.
The promotion of AI Mode on the Google Doodle comes as the tech company makes efforts to expose more users to its latest AI features amid pressure from artificial intelligence startups. That includes OpenAI which makes ChatGPT, Anthropic which makes Claude and Perplexity AI, which bills itself as an “AI-powered answer engine.”
Google’s “Doodle” Tuesday directed users to its search chatbot-like experience “AI Mode”
AI Mode is Google’s chatbot-like experience for complex user questions. The company began displaying AI Mode alongside its search results page in March.
“Search whatever’s on your mind and get AI-powered responses,” the product description reads when clicked from the home page.
AI Mode is powered by Google’s flagship AI model Gemini, and the tool has rolled out to more U.S. users since its launch. Users can ask AI Mode questions using text, voice or images. Google says AI Mode makes it easier to find answers to complex questions that might have previously required multiple searches.
In May, Google tested the AI Mode feature directly beneath the Google search bar, replacing the “I’m Feeling Lucky” widget — a place where Google rarely makes changes.
WATCH: Google buyouts highlight tech’s cost-cutting amid AI CapEx boom
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