(Bloomberg) -- Continental Resources Inc. plunged as much as 44% after founder and majority owner Harold Hamm distributed shares to family members, slashing his stake in the shale driller by more than two-thirds.
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Hamm, the Oklahoma wildcatter who helped usher in the shale-oil breakthroughs that made him a billionaire, held more than 81% of Continental’s outstanding shares prior to Wednesday’s filing that disclosed his stake has shrunk to about 24%.
Continental shares fell as low as $31.21 in the minutes after the disclosure was filed with regulators and hovered in the low- and mid-$30s for more than half an hour before erasing those losses.
The distribution was done for estate-planning purposes, according to the filing. As a result, five Hamm children each now have in their names about $2.3 billion in Continental stock.
Hamm’s holdings in the company he incorporated in 1967 fell to 86.5 million shares from almost 300 million.
(Adds recovery in stock price in final paragraph, estate-planning detail in fourth paragraph.)
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