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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.
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.
This can be read as "businesses should focus on their employees and their customers, not their owners".
Now, explain why, exactly, someone should buy part of a business if they're not going to get some benefit from doing so....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
You knew what you were getting when you bought the shares, King Zuck doesn't give a rat's ass what you want.
"pro-shareholder agenda"
and
"global issues such as climate change, workers' rights, discrimination, human rights, corruption"
seem like seriously conflicting goals.
In looking at FB's operations and returns, Zuckerberg most definitely completed a power grab and returns are below what they should be. I'm all for that being corrected.
The political goals of the group are BS though.
The end users of Facebook are not the "owners" or even the "Customers" for that matter. They are the product.
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.
Start a competitor and put him out of business, like Zuck put MySpace and Friendster out of business.
Oh wait. That's what a serious person willing to back up his mouth with action would do. Not you.
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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Adam Smith warned against granting corporate charters unless it was absolutely necessary. In theory, the cornerstone of a charter is to be the public good. If enforced, that may mean not maximizing shareholder value. But then, they knew that going in.
Absentee ownership of business coupled with no liability is a terrible way to organize an economy.