
Facebook Scraps Plan for New Share Class - pdog
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-22/facebook-scraps-plan-to-create-new-class-of-shares
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Theodores
This bit made me laugh:

"Over the past year and a half, Facebook's business has performed well and the
value of our stock has grown to the point that I can fully fund our
philanthropy and retain voting control of Facebook for 20 years or more,"

I don't think we will be needing Facebook to stay in touch with our friends in
20 years time, by then it should be as anachronistic as the Yellow Pages are
today.

~~~
btown
This assumes that Facebook the corporation doesn't build/buy/otherwise control
the thing that replaces Facebook the web application in 20 years.

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amaks
We'll see about that.

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iaabtpbtpnn
Excellent! A founder shouldn't be able to have his cake and eat it too. Once
you're a public company, you're taking public money and should be responsible
to public votes.

~~~
gfosco
He's still going to maintain a voting majority, just the normal way.

~~~
Waterluvian
Yeah but a huge amount of his wealth is bound to that responsibility.

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pmorici
As it should be.

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shmapf
Can someone explain the maths to me?

His original plan was to donate 99% of his wealth to philanthropy. The problem
was that would involve selling the majority of his fb shares, and he would no
longer have control of the company. To solve this he would split the stock
into voting and non voting rights which would allow him to sell the non voting
ones and maintain control.

Now the claim is that the stock has increased so much this is no longer
necessary. If I understand this correctly, that would mean that the excess
shares he has over 50%, comprise 99% of his wealth, which can't be true
because that excess is strictly less than 50%.

Or perhaps he's just conceded that he will actually give away control, it will
just take 20 years to do so.

~~~
artemisyna
If I had to guess, Zuck is still planning on selling 99% of his shares over
his lifetime. As part of that, he wants CZI to be funded for the next 20
years. The part of his shares over 50% (which by definition, is less than 99%
of his wealth) can do that, so he is going to fund CZI from that in the
immediate term.

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kakarot
_Another part of the proposal, to change the corporate charter to let the
billionaire serve in government without losing control of Facebook, was also
dropped, the company said._

Interesting... Because I still think Zuckerburg has a political office in his
crosshairs. I wonder if this means he is putting that on the back-burner for
now or if he plans to introduce an alternate proposal.

~~~
hobofan
> Because I still think Zuckerburg has a political office in his crosshairs.

Would you care to explain why you would think so?

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chillydawg
Well he was trying to get a pass from the board to let him run for office
while also running FB...

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yeukhon
> Zuckerberg would have had to defend the move that some shareholders said
> diluted their power and was decided without their interests in mind.

Since FB is so "profitable" and such an attractive stock, why is Zuckerberg so
scared of what the shareholders think? Are these the big shareholders or all
the shareholders? The only thing I can think of is he can lose his Chairman of
the Board position.

> The decision follows a rash of technology executives creating special shares
> to control their companies, and may make similar structures more difficult
> to put in place in the future.

I definitely don't want to see that happening myself. If I were ever in his
position, I'd like to retain control while able to sell my assets to do
whatever meaningful work I want to pursue without losing my control on the big
decisions. I could quit being the CEO, but not the board chairman / president
of the board.

~~~
lovich
These special share classes that let the founders get all the money but lose
none of the control sound like a continuation of what companies are trying to
do with consumers. It seems like almost everyone is trying to say that you can
only rent things anymore and no one owns shit.

It used to be if I bought electronics I could put whatever software I could
get on there without the co oany fighting me, when you'd buy a tractor you
could repair it yourself without needing an authorized tech, and when you
bought a percentage of a company you got a vote commensurate to the
percentage.

I understand the desire behind eating your cake and having it too, but I don't
know why society and the government have decided that's a fine way for us all
to live

~~~
si33
If Google was owned by Wall Street and Facebook was owned by Steve Bannon
(Mercer) the world might be a different place.

Everyone knows what happened to the Wright Brothers.

~~~
lovich
What does it matter if they paid for it? I'm ranting more about the rent
seeking that has permeated every aspect of our society than saying one
oligarch is better than the other.

