Facebook shareholders want executive change but don't have the power to command it

Shawn Knight

Posts: 15,253   +192
Staff member
Bottom line: Facebook’s shareholders are frustrated with how the company is being run and more specifically, who is in charge. Unfortunately for them, there’s seemingly little they can do about it but that isn’t stopping them from trying… or at the very least, letting their opinions be known.

As Bloomberg highlights, shareholders were in favor of change at last week’s annual meeting. A proposal to restructure Facebook’s voting process and do away with a special class of shares that give founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg much of his voting power was supported by nearly 82 percent of votes cast, excluding Zuckerberg’s.

Facebook’s founder owns a significant portion of special shares that come with 10 times the voting power of the average share. As such, he holds 57.7 percent of the overall voting power this year.

A proposal to replace Zuckerberg as chairman garnered 67 percent shareholder support – again, excluding Zuckerberg’s votes. A separate proposal aimed at splitting up Zuckerberg’s chairman and CEO roles captured 68 percent of shareholder votes.

Facebook shareholders are clearly fed up with the social network’s repeated mishandling of user data and believe a change in power would help matters. Others, including co-founder Chris Hughes, are taking it a step further and feel it is time to break up the social media titan. But as long as Zuckerberg retains those powerful shares, not much is likely to change unless he wants it to.

Image credit: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg by Frederic Legrand - COMEO

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Zuck should sell Facebook for 1 trillion US dollar and use the monies to buy google. That give him more personal datas!
 
The problem really revolves around the size of Fakebook and their unwillingness to live to to their many, many, many promises. As stated, as the owner he does indeed have absolute control and as such he should be held in absolute responsibility for the many missteps made. We are at a point where we need very specific regulation of social media companies. Not to suppress them, but to hold them to a unified standard to prevent them from being used for purposes that are not in line with standards. Zuke knows exactly what he is doing and as such should be prosecuted as a willing participant in the unlawful influences created and and of the 2016 election.
 
Do people think the shareholders are going to replace Zuck with someone who's going to be better? No, they are going to replace him with a suit that wants to maximize profits.

Yea.... that's what I was thinking. Pretttty sure the shareholders just want an easier to control marionette to maximize their personal wealth by trading in Facebook's commodity -- personal data.
 
Facebook is Mark's. If the shareholders are not satisfied with little power to change. They can take their share and go somewhere else with little power to change.
 
The only thing worse than replacing ducky would be getting someone worse than ducky. In this day and age, that is entirely possible, IMO.
 
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