{"id":44118,"date":"2017-09-23T06:21:43","date_gmt":"2017-09-23T06:21:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=44118"},"modified":"2017-09-23T06:21:43","modified_gmt":"2017-09-23T06:21:43","slug":"zuckerberg-nixes-new-facebook-share-class-after-shareholder-lawsuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/business\/zuckerberg-nixes-new-facebook-share-class-after-shareholder-lawsuit.html","title":{"rendered":"Zuckerberg nixes new Facebook share class after shareholder lawsuit"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 18pt\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Zuckerberg nixes new Facebook share class after shareholder lawsuit<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">Zuckerberg nixes new Facebook share class after shareholder lawsuit: Facebook Inc Chairman Mark Zuckerberg abandoned plans on Friday to create a new class of company stock with no voting power, which was meant to be a way for Zuckerberg to retain control over the company he founded while fulfilling a pledge to give away his wealth.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">Zuckerberg on Friday said that he could meet the charity pledge and maintain voting control of Facebook without the change. His decision followed a shareholder lawsuit opposed to the creation of a new class of stock.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">Zuckerberg said in a post on Facebook that the company\u2019s stock had performed well enough that he could fund his philanthropy by selling stock for at least 20 years and still retain voting control of the company. In December 2015 Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, a pediatrician, pledged to give away 99 percent of their Facebook shares to charity.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">According to court records, Zuckerberg owns more than 400 million shares of Facebook. That would value his holdings at a minimum of $68.2 billion, based on the company\u2019s closing share on Friday of $170.54.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">Zuckerberg said he wanted to help solve global challenges \u201clike curing all diseases in our children\u2019s lifetime and personalizing education for every student.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">Zuckerberg said that over about the next 18 months he planned to sell 35 million to 75 million shares of Facebook, which at Friday\u2019s closing price would raise $13 billion.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">The decision came as Zuckerberg was scheduled to testify on Tuesday in Wilmington, Delaware, in a shareholder lawsuit seeking to halt the Class C stock plan, which had been approved by shareholders.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">Sjunde AP-Fonden, a Swedish national pension fund, and The Amalgamated Bank sued last year, saying that Zuckerberg should have to pay for the right to retain control while selling stock.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">\u201dWe brought this case challenging a significant change in Facebook corporate governance, and by agreeing to abandon the reclassification we got everything we could have hoped to get,\u201d said Lee Rudy of shareholder law firm Kessler Topaz Meltzer &amp; Check.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">Rudy said the Class C proposal was rejected by 80 percent of minority shareholders in a vote last year. Zuckerberg controls 60 percent of Facebook\u2019s stockholder vote, which helped carry the proposal.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">Google, now Alphabet Inc, proposed a similar stock reclassification in 2012, and court records show that Facebook\u2019s general counsel suggested Zuckerberg could use it as a model for Facebook.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">Google settled with shareholders in a deal that included a $522 million dividend, payable under certain conditions.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">Withdrawing the share plan comes as Facebook faces pressure over advertisements on the social network and the role they may have played in last year\u2019s U.S. presidential election.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">President Donald Trump questioned on Friday the company\u2019s decision to overhaul how it handles paid political ads amid investigations into alleged Russian interference in U.S. elections.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 8pt;color: #000000\">Source:http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/us-facebook-stock-trial\/zuckerberg-nixes-new-facebook-share-class-after-shareholder-lawsuit-idUSKCN1BX2PA<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"fb-background-color\">\n\t\t\t  <div \n\t\t\t  \tclass = \"fb-comments\" \n\t\t\t  \tdata-href = \"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/business\/zuckerberg-nixes-new-facebook-share-class-after-shareholder-lawsuit.html\"\n\t\t\t  \tdata-numposts = \"10\"\n\t\t\t  \tdata-lazy = \"true\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-colorscheme = \"light\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-order-by = \"social\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-mobile=true>\n\t\t\t  <\/div><\/div>\n\t\t  <style>\n\t\t    .fb-background-color {\n\t\t\t\tbackground: #ffffff !important;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t.fb_iframe_widget_fluid_desktop iframe {\n\t\t\t    width: 630px !important;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t  <\/style>\n\t\t  ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Zuckerberg nixes new Facebook share class after shareholder lawsuit Zuckerberg nixes new Facebook share class after shareholder lawsuit: Facebook Inc Chairman Mark Zuckerberg abandoned plans on Friday to create a new class of company stock with no voting power, which was meant to be a way for Zuckerberg to retain [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":44129,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[24258,24183,24235,24234,61203],"class_list":["post-44118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-best-usa-latest-business-updates-and-news","tag-current-business-updates-in-usa","tag-latest-business-updates-and-usa-news","tag-top-usa-latest-business-and-regional-news","tag-zuckerberg-nixes-new-facebook-share-class-after-shareholder-lawsuit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44118\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}