You’d think Facebook shareholders would be happy with CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
After all, he has led the company to a position of total domination in the mobile ad space, a performance that has caused Facebook stock to be worth more than 6 times it’s November 2012 low of roughly $19 per share.
But at least one shareholder is taking issue with a shareholder structure, instituted before the company’s 2012 IPO, that gives Zuckerberg voting control over the company even as he owns far less than 50% of the economic value of the company. As Fortune’s Erin Griffith explains, “Facebook’s A-class shares give Zuckerberg “supervoting” power that allow him to maintain control over the company, even as he sold shares to venture capitalists and in Facebook’s public offering.”
According to a report in the Financial Times, Julie Goodridge, president and chief executive of Northstar Asset Management, is not pleased with this set of circumstances, especially as the company is moving to create a third class of shares that will enable Zuckerberg to maintain control of the company even as he fills his pledge to give away 99% of his wealth, mostly tied up in Facebook shares, to a charitable foundation run by him and and his wife.
“The current share structure affords the shareholders who have provided the majority of capital since the company went public absolutely no consequential manner of communicating dissent with any decision Mr. Zuckerberg chooses to make,” she writes.
Of course, anyone who bought shares of Facebook (FB) over the past four years was well aware that they would have little decision making power, and the fact that shareholders have been compensated handsomely in terms of capital gains in recent years makes it unlikely that Goodridge will rally much support to her cause.
Fortune has reached out to Facebook and will update this post if it responds.
