Industry News
Vail Resorts announced yesterday that Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Rob Katz has exercised stock appreciation rights (SARs) and will be donating 100% of the shares and proceeds received to his family charitable foundation and donor-advised charitable fund.
Based on the market price on the date of exercise of $235.53 per share, the donation is equal to approximately $15.7 million. After withholding taxes, Katz received approximately 66,688 shares of Vail Resorts stock from the SARs exercise, all of which will be donated either in the form of a donation of shares or a donation of cash proceeds that were received from the sale of shares.
The charitable foundation and fund have been initially focused on helping to address mental and behavioral health issues in mountain resort communities.
This isn’t the first time Katz and his wife have given back to the community. Last year Katz donated $31-million, from exercising SARs. In 2017, Katz made a similar donation of $58 million to a new donor-advised fund that focused on the behavioral health and alcohol and drug abuse in mountain resort communities. They’ve donated $650,000 in grants to local community non-profits and made a $750,000 donation in March 2018 to Operation Homefront, an organization that supports military families. They plan to make another round of grants to non-profits in Vail communities before the end of the year.
