Richard D. Fairbank, Chairman and CEO of Capital One Financial (COF), has been a consistent net seller of company stock over the past year, with no open-market purchases recorded in his recent Form 4 filings. Across 75 total transactions spanning his tenure, the aggregate value of sales reached approximately $67.7 million, while his total buy value stood at zero. The most recent cluster of activity, dated November 4, 2025, shows seven open-market sales (code S) totaling roughly $11.0 million, with individual transactions ranging from about $848,000 to $7.6 million. This pattern of periodic, large-scale disposals—unaccompanied by any corresponding purchases—points to a clear selling bias over the observed period.
The more recent filings, however, reflect a shift toward routine, non-discretionary movements. On March 9, 2026, Fairbank reported two equity grants (code A) with no monetary value, paired with two tax-withholding transactions (code F) valued at approximately $5.6 million and $4.7 million. Similarly, on February 15, 2026, he recorded option exercises (code M) with zero reported value, followed by sales back to the issuer (code D) totaling about $9.8 million. These transactions, along with a series of smaller code F and M entries on February 3, 2026, are consistent with compensation vesting and automatic share withholding for tax obligations rather than discretionary trading decisions. The absence of any code P (open-market purchase) activity throughout the entire dataset reinforces that Fairbank’s insider behavior has been dominated by sell-side liquidity events, whether through direct market sales or issuer buybacks tied to equity compensation.
AI-assisted summary