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A comment on Andreessen Horowitz to give half their earnings to charity. Parent comment

Re:Andreessen Horowitz to give half their earnings to charity by tptacek on Wednesday April 25, 2012 @09:28PM (#3891945)
I'm not sure what these two things have to do with each other. Elon Musk's goals with SpaceX are entirely different than Facebook's goals with Instagram. No business purpose of Facebook's would have been served by building orbital vehicles. Facebook hasn't even gone public yet; the money we're talking about isn't yet Zuckerberg's to spend randomly.
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Re:Andreessen Horowitz to give half their earnings to charity by toomuchtodo on Wednesday April 25, 2012 @09:41PM (#3891973)
Zuckerberg has majority ownership of Facebook shares; he has defacto control of whatever capital Facebook has available to it, whether it's "his" money or not. Was there not discusion that he didn't confer with Facebook's board before completing the Instagram purchase?
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Re:Andreessen Horowitz to give half their earnings to charity by tptacek on Wednesday April 25, 2012 @09:52PM (#3891994)
No: majority shareholders of corporations continue to owe fiduciary duty to the minority. This is obviously tangential to the real point, though. Google paid more than 12 SpaceX's for Motorola. Would docking with the ISS help with the Android patent problem?
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Re:Andreessen Horowitz to give half their earnings to charity by keithwinstein on Thursday April 26, 2012 @12:07AM (#3892347)
The directors are fiduciaries. Shareholders aren't fiduciaries and don't owe a duty to other shareholders.
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Re:Andreessen Horowitz to give half their earnings to charity by anamax on Thursday April 26, 2012 @12:38AM (#3892456)
While majority stockholders may not be fiduciaries, googling "duties to minority stockholders" suggests that they have some duties wrt minority stockholders, at least in some cases.
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Re:Andreessen Horowitz to give half their earnings to charity by nostrademons on Thursday April 26, 2012 @05:38AM (#3893102)
IIUC corporate officers are fiduciaries as well; hence, shareholder lawsuits. As CEO of Facebook, Zuckerburg could be liable for wasting Facebook's money.
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