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Facebook Shareholders Force A Vote On Ousting Mark Zuckerberg (businessinsider.com)
On May 30th, Facebook's shareholder's will vote on whether to remove Mark Zuckerberg as chairman of the board, reports Business Insider:
Business Insider broke the news of the proposal in July last year after revealing the plans of activist shareholder Trillium Asset Management, which had grown tired of the "mishandling" of scandals including the Cambridge Analytica data breach. Responding to the proposal in the SEC filing, Facebook called on investors to vote it down. "We believe our board of directors is functioning effectively under its current structure, and that the current structure provides appropriate oversight protections," Facebook said...
The chance of it becoming a reality is extremely slim, despite it being backed by investors that control around $3 billion of Facebook stock. A similar proposal in 2017 was popular among independent investors but was crushed because of Zuckerberg's voting power. This is because of Facebook's dual-class share structure. Class B shares have 10 times the voting power of class A shares, and it just so happens that Zuckerberg owns more than 75% of class B stock. It means he has more than half of the voting power at Facebook....
Facebook will almost certainly get its way. But the two investor proposals mark continued dissatisfaction among shareholders about the way Facebook is run following a year from hell for the company. It also shows that investors continue to believe that Zuckerberg has too much power.
The chance of it becoming a reality is extremely slim, despite it being backed by investors that control around $3 billion of Facebook stock. A similar proposal in 2017 was popular among independent investors but was crushed because of Zuckerberg's voting power. This is because of Facebook's dual-class share structure. Class B shares have 10 times the voting power of class A shares, and it just so happens that Zuckerberg owns more than 75% of class B stock. It means he has more than half of the voting power at Facebook....
Facebook will almost certainly get its way. But the two investor proposals mark continued dissatisfaction among shareholders about the way Facebook is run following a year from hell for the company. It also shows that investors continue to believe that Zuckerberg has too much power.
Ha-haa. So people buy Facebook stocks which do not pay dividends and do not get any influence in shareholder meeting as the raving lunatic CEO has all the power in company. Even bitcoins and tulips look better investment targets than Facebook.
Don't like the way a company is run sell the stock. No one is forcing these people to hold shares.
Too much power? It's his company, and yours to choose whether to invest in it or not. Now I despise FB and everything it stands for as much as the next guy, but good on Zuck for having retained a controlling interest in his company. Maybe I've seen too much of the other extreme, with VCs asking for too large a piece of the pie in exchange for a pittance.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
you could just... you know... invest in another company if you don't like that one.
Holding 3 billion of stock with basically no decision rights. That's a cute position to be in. How greedy do you have to be?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Nah, he looks too alien.
slim.
Class B shares have 10 times the voting power of class A shares, and it just so happens that Zuckerberg owns more than 75% of class B stock.
Right, I'm sure he'll just oust himself. This is news why? Because Trillium Asset Management is bored?
It's a pr move by trillium. They can claim they tried when a big issue comes out to fix the problem
Trillium Money Grabbers more like. I'm no fan of facebook - don't use it - or zuckerberg, but its his baby, he created the company and these parasites have him to thank for the increasing value of their investments. If they don't like it they're free to take their dirty gold elsewhere.
How has the scandal been mishandled? It looks like a textbook response of attempting to avoid and shift all blame while doing the bare minimum to appease 3rd parties.
What do they prefer? Full ownership and action? That is the BP / VW way (except for the action bit) and is now a case study in business textbooks of what not to do.
The disaffected shareholders could just sell their shares.
Problem solved. Facebook's value would plummet but with the shares sold, it isn't their problem anymore.
Why would any sane investor do that except at a substantial discount?
Google did a similar trick.
You are putting money into something that you have no control over. E.g. Zuck's salary.
Too equine.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
This is just some kind of grandstanding. Even if Zuckerburg didn't have the controlling shares to stop this I think other key share holders would stop him from being ousted. Despite all the main stream media hate I think Zuckerburg has handled the "scandals" pretty well and most shareholders know this.
It would work if they could put a metal rod through him and slowly rotate him over fire first?
Here in Denmark the A stocks have the voting power, B stocks have none.
Usually the majority of the A stocks are held by the founders family or a foundation: we have quite a few companies owned that way, for instance Carlsberg owned by the Carlsberg foundation giving money to science.
I guess for myself if your on the board, or a Facebook investor and you don't like what Zuckerberg is doing then get out. Its his company to drive into the ground. Personally I wouldn't invest a nickel into Facebook given all the pending privacy litigations. Removing Zuckerberg is hardly the solution to Facebook's woes.
Imagine what investor-centric FB would look like. Maximum ads, maximum data selling, maximum profiling. As much as I dislike Zuck and everything he stands for, I think opening floodgates to predatory capitalism on this isn't going to improve things.
Cambridge Analytica wasn't a data breach.
Every piece of data they gathered was allowed by the site rules
Zero response from their servers.
Why would the shareholders hold any votes if a single person has over half the votes?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
If you read the second paragraph you will see that it is no longer his company, but he retains control through a clear abuse of process.
It is obviously the first move in a process to prove abuse of power with regard to his fiduciary responsibility to shareholders. The next major step will be to use the courts, perhaps as a threat, to wrestle equal voting rights to investors. Once they have that they will have a power to maximise profits at the expense of their users.
I'm certainly not a fan, but in this case he is probably acting in FB's users best interests wrt privacy.
.. how that situation can possible even be legal.
Trillium is an activist investor, in this case "activist" meaning they want to push their social agenda on corporations.
A cynic would see their FB actions as marketing for their "socially responsible" mutual fund. In other words playing to their (SJW) base, a carefully tuned dog whistle just like Trump's border wall.
Or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.
...
Datamining their users and selling access to them is what they do.
Zuck might for the moment be a lightning rod for what is wrong with the company, but I doubt getting rid of him will help the companies image for very long. The reality of the way they make money and its side effects will come up time and time again regardless.
At the same time you lose someone who runs the company because he cares for it rather than purely for the money. Seems like a poor deal to me.
"... the raving lunatic CEO has all the power..."
"Raving lunatic" doesn't seem correct to me. I'm amazed at 2 things about Zuckerberg:
1) After all these years, to me he still looks somewhat like and acts a lot like a young teenager, or even a 12-year-old: 2018 photo.
2) Zuckerberg seems completely comfortable with lying.
He's a psychopath. He literally does not give a damn about other people and is in fact incapable of it.
I stopped using profile based telecommunications a long time ago. Nobody wants to see my cat photos. If someone is important to you then contact them directly or invite them out somewhere. Clicking 'thumbs up' on something doesn't mean shit in the real world, it just feeds data miners.
"Owning" company stock via an index fund or ETF or mutual fund does not grant you voting rights. You have to actually own individual company stock in order to vote.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
People are frozen at the age they first become wealthy. He sees the world through a lens of his own making.
Cheap storage VM.
By The Zuck's own standards, he has gotten too old -- and therefore too stupid -- to work in the tech industry anymore.
He should step aside so that smart people (i.e. those under the age of 25) can take over and "disrupt" the shit out of it.