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Facebook Shareholders Urge Company To Replace Mark Zuckerberg With 'Independent' Board Chair (venturebeat.com)
An anonymous reader shares a VentureBeat report: Facebook is being pressured by a group of shareholders seeking the removal of company chief executive Mark Zuckerberg from the board of the directors. A proposal has been put forward claiming that an independent chairperson would be better able to "oversee the executives of the company, improve corporate governance, and set a more accountable, pro-shareholder agenda." The idea for Zuckerberg's board ousting comes from Facebook shareholders who are members of the consumer watchdog group SumOfUs. The organization bills itself as an online community that campaigns to hold corporations accountable on a variety of global issues such as climate change, workers' rights, discrimination, human rights, corruption, and corporate power grab.
I'm not anti-capitalist, but I am anti publicly traded companies as they exist today. Corporations should focus on their employees and their customers, not shareholders.
Third party organization wants to oust founder of company from board of directors because of their activism in the area of "power grab."
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
You knew what you were getting when you bought the shares, King Zuck doesn't give a rat's ass what you want.
To replace Facebook, and execute Mark Z.
Not necessarily in that order.
Do you honestly believe that characterisation? Considering shareholders third party is strange.They are owners of the business.
Moreover, just because he's founder don't mean shit if he's blowing it. They think he is.
Shareholders are essentially lighting their own money on fire if they go along with this. It's their money to burn. Besides, if they kill Facebook, it would be a great thing for society. Facebook and the other social networks are a shancre on society.
"pro-shareholder agenda"
and
"global issues such as climate change, workers' rights, discrimination, human rights, corruption"
seem like seriously conflicting goals.
The only thing I hate more than the idea of Facebook headed by the narcissistic Zuckerberg is the idea of a Facebook headed by a sociopathic panel of faceless suits.
Irony Level: Master
Zuck may be a lot of things, but he's certainly no blacksmith.
he started the thing, took it public, and last I saw, was making a pretty damn good profit for the shareholders. Its no wonder there are fewer public companies now than in years past, why go public and deal with asshole bankers who think they know your business?
I think Mark Z is either trying to find a way out by making it look like people don't want him there (they had years, why now?) so he can get into politics. Or, those in politics realized this and now want to destroy him and FB before the next election. Either way, FB has got to go. It's getting too much power and influence over everyone.
That's not really true. They just want to get 'some' power. The problem with many of these new unicorn tech businesses is that buying a share does not give you any useful voting rights in the company's operation. People like zuck hold share classes that basically means he can out vote everyone even though he doesn't own much of the business. This isn't really healthy and has set a precedent which many other tech companies are all to happy to follow.
You might say that nobody has to buy the shares. That's true, but again, I don't think this is something we want to see become the norm, which is what is happening now. It's a bit like when govts pass surveillance laws for a specific situation, and when people complain they say 'hey it's not going to affect you, it's just this special case, don't worry' and then ten years later they are using those laws to keep the population in check. These super share classes are fine when the companies act like regular companies, but as soon as it is widespread, there are just so many ways in which the unicorns can screw their shareholders, it could get really really nasty.
You also have to wonder whether it would be healthy to end up in a situation where 70% of the shareholders cannot stop the CEO from doing something they all don't want him to do. Because that is really the only situation where Zuckerberg needs his super shares, so what does he think he might want to do that would require this sort of power?
Personally, I think markets need counterbalancing forces, and this is one of them, even though it will probably fail.
So there's a vote and he votes for himself. (unless he's got a devious plan)
This is a publicity grab by overactive activists. While I suspect I share their political bent this looks like generic hissy fit activism.
Sounds like some people with a political agenda want control of the largest social network on the planet. Sounds like a bad idea to me. While Mark may lean left, at least he is driven by the dollar and has at least publicly expressed his interest in keeping facebook as a site independent.
99% of the people who signed the request aren't shareholders, and 99% of shareholders didn't sign the request. The overlap between this third-party group and Facebook shareholders is small. Since there *are* a few people in both groups, they were able to officially file the proposal.
In just the last three months, there have been 23 million purchases of Facebook stock. That's probably fairly close to the number of Facebook stockholders - tens of millions. 1500 are part of this activist group.
1am10andthisisedgy
In corporate America, money talks. A significant fraction (say, 20 percent or more) of FB shares talks.
Not a whole bunch of people signing an online petition because they want the company to devote even more attention to their social causes than they are already. That's a non-story.
Mark Zuckerberg is officially the worst person in the world. He's even worse than Bill Gates, which is something I never thought we'd see. I wholeheartedly endorse bashing him in the face with a baseball bat until Facebook ceases to exist.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
1) I don't use facebook
2) pro-shareholder = probably not pro-user/consumer
Well,
Is this necessary? is he really doing such a shit job that they have to step in, or are they trying to impose their belief's on others, sort-of like prohibition and we all know how that turned out..
i am speaking as someone uninformed and responding to the article @ face value..
'nuff said.
AC comments get piped to
He's got enough money, retire early, enjoy life with your wife.
I would argue that everyone, not just executives, are addicted to money and will make decisions in their own interest at the expense of others. The problem is the executives are the ones with the most money and the most power to make decisions that have a greater impact on others, so they get the attention and the label of being evil. Another group with a similar reputation is politicians, for similar reasons.
Sorry for the ALLCAPS but this needs to be screamed out loud. This is the "nongovernmental" group that Hillary Clinton tapped to run arms to ISIS through Benghazi. The leaders are totally corrupt Westerners who view their millions of followers as marketable assets. They sell out their party line to known state sponsors of terrorism which results in a women's march led by the Muslim Brotherhood and a gay movement that blames white Christians for Muslims shooting up a gay bar. All they care about is power, money, and seeing how much trouble they can cause. They are basically trolls who ruin entire civilizations. Imagine what Weev would do with billions of dollars behind him and federal immunity from prosecution.
The probable story here is that Zuckerberg is the last Facebook board member to remotely care about free speech and they want to get rid of him.
If the independent board committee wanted to run Facebook then it should have invented Facebook.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Or they could divest themselves of Facebook shares if they don't like how it's run...?
Zucki is a member of the West Coast Cosa Nostra mostly center between Palo Alto and San Jose, south Bay, Cal.
His billion make him an "Untouchable".
Your sig, "The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!", would have really made me laugh last night.
Is that a quote from somewhere?
In other words, a bunch of whiners don't like the Zuck, and want him ousted.
Zuckerberg owns a majority of voting shares. Any group can try and "pressure" anything they want, but unless Z man agrees, they're wasting their breath.
Now that Zuckerberg is over 30, he's obviously lost it.
From one of his 'early' interviews:
"I want to stress the importance of being young and technical," he stated, adding that successful start-ups should only employ young people with technical expertise. (Zuckerberg also apparently missed the class on employment and discrimination law.)
"Young people are just smarter," he said, with a straight face, according to VentureBeat. "Why are most chess masters under 30?" he asked. "I don't know...Young people just have simpler lives. We may not own a car. We may not have family."
This is a good thing because when Facebook does something illegal, it is clear who the problem is. Zukerberg has the ultimate power and therefore can be accountable in a way that a company with distributed ownership cannot.
People love to throw the word "should" around.
When money is involved, that-which-works will win over that-which-others-think-should-be-done every single time. Your moralizing doesn't make me money, so I ignore it.
There really isn't much to ponder, here.
I hope they succeed. Mostly because I think it's retarded that Zuckerberg is that rich at the moment. I want Facebook to implode. Aside from Facebook events. The entire user experience has gone to hell in the last few months/years. Ads are increasingly taking over the newsfeed and it's just a user interface mess.
I don't like facebook at the moment, I think it's too focused on a novelty market, which isn't my cup of tea, sadly this is what happens when something grows too big. Too many smilies for my liking. When it was plain text I was ok with it. Anyway, that's just my disagreements.
Mark built the company. What gives anyone the right to put someone else in his place? If you want to be in the facebook club and buy shares, then play by the rules of the club when you joined, don't go crying because you've not seen the big ROI that you expected, pays your monies, takes your chances. Mark's club.
Why UNIX?
The organization bills itself as an online community that campaigns to hold corporations accountable on a variety of global issues such as climate change, workers' rights, discrimination, human rights, corruption, and corporate power grab.
As they power grab to promote their own political agenda.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
Given that ownership and the reasonable expectation that Zuckerberg would vote no, the Hurdle is likley to high to climb so the story is a publicity stunt only.
But that is only the publiclly available stock (class A) there is also a class b that has 10x the voting power of class a if you combine the class a and b zukerberg controls 57 percent of the votes in a stockholders meeting. One can expect him to vote no and that is that. Facebook is classified as a controlled company because of this meaning that one individual controls the company.
So the propnets of the change have lost before they started but must enjoy tilting at windmills.
Ah, yes. Just like copyright law, the laws governing corporations are an abomination and perversion of what was originally intended.
In the beginning:
What the hell happened? Corporations made TONS of money off of the Civil War (Military-Industrial Complex?). Corporations bought influence and successfully eroded the protections given to the people by the founders and the states from such corporations as the East India Company.
Yes, I know we like to ridicule the founders as not being worthy of the pedestal they've been placed on. But they got a lot of things right that got royally screwed up over time. Corporations were not intended to be given power with the singular purpose of making money. They were intended to be given power to fulfill a purpose, and then dissolve when the purpose was fulfilled, or no longer necessary. The corporation would cease to exist if it violated any laws, and the people running the corporation would be held accountable for those actions. Almost sounds like a utopia.
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Hippie Logger Jock
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at least that would be of use to humanity.
I wish I could give this some points...
http://i.cubeupload.com/T6cyLu.png