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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.
"pro-shareholder agenda"
and
"global issues such as climate change, workers' rights, discrimination, human rights, corruption"
seem like seriously conflicting goals.
Blowing it - as the director of the company - would mean he is doing things that cause FaceBook to lose money. Is that what SumOfUs is complaining about?
From the summary, I'm guessing 'No'. They seem to be against him b'cos he's not on the same page as them on issues such as climate change, workers' rights, discrimination, human rights, corruption, and corporate power grab. But if a company wants to be dedicated to those things, they should be private and carefully distribute ownership only to people who are on the same page as them as far as that goes
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.
In other words, a bunch of whiners don't like the Zuck, and want him ousted.
If I had anywhere near that amount of money and a drive to continue working, I'd at least go Elon Musk and continually pivot towards anything that interested me or would push the world forward.
Arguably, that's what he does. The things that interest you (or me) are different than the things that interest him, though.
I honestly don't understand why all these people stick around so long. I know, they see it as their baby and don't want to leave it, but it can't really be fun to keep doing the boring business stuff day in and day out.
The feeling of accomplishment is addicting. Plus power.......it's like playing video games, except it's real so it's better.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
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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