I mean, did people not read the prospectus? What, exactly, did they think "dual class" meant? These people should consider divesting, because I'm not certain that they studied their investment target closely enough to wargame out different possible outcomes prior to throwing money at FB.
This vote was proposed by Trillium Asset Management, an activist investment group. They hold $7M of Facebook stock, and the group they lead to bring the ouster vote appear to control around $3B. These are people who knew what they were investing in, and decided to bring this vote to put pressure on Facebook, not in a deluded hope that it would pass. What's more, a bunch of the outside investors seem to want more leverage without wanting Zuckerberg out - there's a 15-point gap between "voted for a new chair" and "voted to end dual class stock".
More broadly, this is just a round of the kind of corporate advertising via news that PG called the 'submarine' (http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html). Trillium called a vote that couldn't pass, and was on hand to provide a pithy closing quote to Business Insider's reporter. BoingBoing is running the story with a narrative of fighting the evil tech billionaires, never mind that Doctorow normally hates the idea of companies "disciplined by shareholder choices". Meanwhile, Trillium's website posted the story "Trillium's Ongoing Pressure on Facebook Governance in the News" - this is a conscious and apparently quite effective effort to create a "Zuckerberg ignores his shareholders" narrative.
My point is that the prospectus "...is a conscious and apparently quite effective effort to create a 'Zuckerberg ignores his shareholders' narrative..."
It's quite literally, publicly stated company policy in this regard.
Everyone who bought in knew, or should have known, that Zuckerberg had the power to ignore their votes. But in principle, that could have been limited to fending off raiders, mergers, or other harmful initiatives. By repeatedly demanding an executive chair to provide oversight, Trillium stresses the idea that Zuckerberg is using his majority vote to defend irresponsible leadership.
Will anything actually come of it? Probably not, but if FTC or SEC pressure amounts to something real it might position them better to gain influence over the company.
About the only thing this fuss does is manipulate Facebook's share price.
Of course, everyone wants a bigger piece of the pie, so they can try to bring even more political pressure on Zuck.
That said, these voters should try to change the SEC guidelines, no use hating the player, change the game.
This administration seems to want to go after tech. If you’re a large Facebook investor, encourage them. You’re going to lose some value, but less than if you leave Mark in charge.
We're not Jedi.
If we want things to change, we have to change the actual laws. Expecting lawyers to find some violation under current law is fanciful in the extreme.
There's always the option of putting your money where your mouth is. If you're saying a dual class structure is bad, and not in the interest of shareholders or companies? I mean, well, you should be willing to put your money behind that assertion. It should be to your benefit because the implication is that not investing in companies with dual class structures should be more profitable over time.