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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.
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.
"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.
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?
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.
Nothing like advocating murder when things don't go one's way
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.
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.
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.
'nuff said.
AC comments get piped to
He's got enough money, retire early, enjoy life with your wife.
Pity, because he was could make his own shoes.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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.
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.
Why now? Because the last few years and last year moreso has seen the exponential rise of the uber-whiner small group of people being given a stage for their hyper-whiny bullcrap. Because they see themselves as similar to at least one other person they assume this validates their point of view so much so that it must be the right point of view for everybody, and you are a _______ (fill in the blank with racist, sexist, whatever) if you disagree and don't immediately bow to their will. With the irony being social media platforms, like facebook, are what gave these fringe groups the idea that they were more than a fringe group in the first place.
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.
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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