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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.
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.
Why would any sane investor do that except at a substantial discount?
Because most investors are interested in making money, and not in "having a say".
I have never, not once, cast a vote for a board member or sent in a proxy form. I just toss them in the trash. So why should I care if I have voting rights, when I don't exercise them?
Then Zuck shouldn't have taken the company public if he didn't want outside investors to have a say in a company. That's the deal. It is partially their company too.
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
"It's his company, "
clearly you dont understand the equity marketsl. Rember when facebook did its IPO (Initial public offering)? The second word there is key.
I would never invest in facebook, and it is time for a reform program to avoid all this restricted voting, superclass share nonsense.. but fundamentally, it isnt his company anymore... he took public funds, and kept all the voting rights too.