<story><title>Mark Zuckerberg Gets to Control Facebook a While Longer</title><url>http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-04-28/mark-zuckerberg-gets-to-control-facebook-a-while-longer</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>abhi3</author><text>This is new information, earlier things were like this:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;If Mr. Zuckerberg were to leave us or if his employment with us were to be terminated for &amp;quot;cause,&amp;quot; under the Current Certificate, he would not be required to relinquish majority voting control. Moreover, under the Current Certificate, Mr. Zuckerberg would be able to pass along his shares of Class B common stock (and potentially his majority voting control depending on sales or transfers by Mr. Zuckerberg, as well as changes in our share count) to his descendants after his death, thus leading to potential multi-generational majority voting control of the company.&lt;p&gt;The Special Committee and the board of directors believe that attracting a qualified chief executive officer to succeed Mr. Zuckerberg would be significantly more difficult if Mr. Zuckerberg, our founder and (in that event) former chief executive officer, continued to retain majority voting control of us in such a circumstance. The Special Committee and the board of directors also believe that the quality of a chief executive officer who would step into the role under these circumstances is likely to be significantly lower than it would be if we were no longer controlled by Mr. Zuckerberg, which could result in the potential loss of significant value for us and our shares of Class A common stock.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;But after this deal Mark cannot retain voting control if he leaves or is fired for cause. He also cannot pass on his current voting rights if he sells is shares or his kids inherit them.&lt;p&gt;Seems like FB did get something in return.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lazaroclapp</author><text>The more interesting part here, is that Zuckerberg being 31 years old, and having a life expectancy of 82.3 years, means the people who insisted on this agreement believe there is a significant chance of Facebook still being around 51 years from now. By comparison Yahoo is 20 years old and not precisely in its prime, and Sun Microsystems existed only for 28 years.&lt;p&gt;That said, it means investors are betting on FB being a long lived (software) company, such as Oracle (39 years and counting), Apple (40), Microsoft (41) or, in the extreme, IBM (105).</text></comment>
<story><title>Mark Zuckerberg Gets to Control Facebook a While Longer</title><url>http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-04-28/mark-zuckerberg-gets-to-control-facebook-a-while-longer</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>abhi3</author><text>This is new information, earlier things were like this:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;If Mr. Zuckerberg were to leave us or if his employment with us were to be terminated for &amp;quot;cause,&amp;quot; under the Current Certificate, he would not be required to relinquish majority voting control. Moreover, under the Current Certificate, Mr. Zuckerberg would be able to pass along his shares of Class B common stock (and potentially his majority voting control depending on sales or transfers by Mr. Zuckerberg, as well as changes in our share count) to his descendants after his death, thus leading to potential multi-generational majority voting control of the company.&lt;p&gt;The Special Committee and the board of directors believe that attracting a qualified chief executive officer to succeed Mr. Zuckerberg would be significantly more difficult if Mr. Zuckerberg, our founder and (in that event) former chief executive officer, continued to retain majority voting control of us in such a circumstance. The Special Committee and the board of directors also believe that the quality of a chief executive officer who would step into the role under these circumstances is likely to be significantly lower than it would be if we were no longer controlled by Mr. Zuckerberg, which could result in the potential loss of significant value for us and our shares of Class A common stock.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;But after this deal Mark cannot retain voting control if he leaves or is fired for cause. He also cannot pass on his current voting rights if he sells is shares or his kids inherit them.&lt;p&gt;Seems like FB did get something in return.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hsod</author><text>How can he be fired if he has majority control?</text></comment>