{"id":2937,"date":"2018-07-26T21:38:21","date_gmt":"2018-07-26T17:38:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/?p=2937"},"modified":"2018-07-26T21:38:21","modified_gmt":"2018-07-26T17:38:21","slug":"mark-zuckerberg-faces-investor-anger-as-record-123bn-wiped-from-facebook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/2018\/07\/26\/mark-zuckerberg-faces-investor-anger-as-record-123bn-wiped-from-facebook\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Zuckerberg faces investor anger as record $123bn wiped from Facebook"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg was facing pressure to abandon his dual role as chairman and chief executive\u00a0after over\u00a0$120\u00a0billion was wiped from the value of the group\u00a0in\u00a0the single biggest one-day loss of value for any company in US market history.<\/p>\n

The Silicon Valley giant, which for years has served as a reliable cash cow for shareholders, warned of slowing growth,\u00a0rising costs and missed revenue targets, sending shares in the company plunging when US markets opened on Thursday.\u00a0Mr Zuckerberg’s failure to\u00a0inspire confidence on a call with investors\u00a0prompted\u00a0its\u00a0share price to fall by\u00a0nearly 20pc.<\/p>\n

The shareholder revolt was led by Boston-based Trillium Asset Management, which holds $11m of stock. The activist investor\u00a0issued a\u00a0call for Zuckerberg\u00a0to\u00a0end his dual role at\u00a0the company, which has been rocked by a string of scandals over hacking, privacy and a failure to police fake news, extremist and violent content.<\/p>\n

Trillium senior vice president Jonas Kron told\u00a0The Daily Telegraph<\/em>: “We want Facebook to be sustainable and we think in order to do that they need to change their governance. We have our eyes wide open. He controls 60pc of the vote so it’s ultimately his decision.”<\/p>\n

A proposal sent to Facebook’s board by Trillium said: “We believe this lack of independent board chair and oversight has contributed to Facebook missing, or mishandling, a number of severe controversies, increasing risk exposure and costs to shareholders.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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T<\/span>he fall was the largest drop ever for a US-listed company and\u00a0the\u00a0biggest ever\u00a0drop in the net value of an individual in a single day. It has been\u00a0compared to\u00a0Intel’s\u00a0$91bn plunge in value at the turn of the millennium. Others suggested the loss was comparable to “Marlboro Friday” when tobacco giant Philip Morris saw its shares hit for 20pc in 1993.<\/p>\n

Zuckerberg’s wealth dropped by over $15 billion in the five minutes after US markets opened. He remains the world’s sixth richest man.<\/p>\n

Dislodging Mr Zuckerberg from an executive role\u00a0would\u00a0be difficult because his dual share ownership gives him control of more than 60pc of the voting rights of the $500bn social media company. Trillium is also a relatively small shareholder.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, industry experts have bemoaned the company’s self-inflicted\u00a0wounds and mishandling\u00a0of major controversies in recent months and other shareholders have\u00a0expressed similar views.<\/p>\n

Nordea’s head of sustainable finance Sasja Beslik, who earlier this year halted his fund’s investment in Facebook, said: “It’s one of the things that\u00a0 Facebook could do to improve perception within the investment community.”<\/p>\n

Last year a similar package of measures was proposed\u00a0to investors. It won\u00a051pc of votes from shareholders who were not Facebook executives or board members.\u00a0In an interview this month, a US tech journalist joked with Mr\u00a0Zuckerberg that only he could\u00a0fire himself. Trillium’s proposal will be voted on in May 2019.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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O<\/span>n Wednesday, Facebook reported revenues of $13.23bn for the three months to the end of June, up from $9.2bn a year earlier, but missing analysts’ expectations of $13.36bn. Facebook reported daily active users, a key metric for measuring how many people are using the site, had\u00a0fallen in markets like Europe.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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I<\/span>nvestors are starting to fear\u00a0that Facebook is reaching its limits in terms of growth in its most valuable markets. Former Facebook product manager Antonio Garc\u00eda Mart\u00ednez said the company had “hit a growth wall”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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W<\/span>hile the company has been shaken by a data scandal over its sharing of personal data with political research companies like Cambridge Analytica, the real concern for\u00a0investors appears to be\u00a0Facebook’s slowdown in its\u00a0most important markets, which have become saturated.<\/p>\n

Baird analyst Colin Sebastian said “these are ‘self-inflicted’\u00a0issues to a large degree” as Facebook invests in new staff\u00a0to spot\u00a0fake\u00a0news on\u00a0its platform and new technology to improve safety, increasing costs.<\/p>\n

The bruising day also extended to other tech giants, adding\u00a0to concerns that the tech stock rally of the last 12 months may be coming to an end. Twitter shares were down 3pc in early trading while Amazon shares slipped 2pc.<\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

Telegraph<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg was facing pressure to abandon his dual role as chairman and chief executive\u00a0after over\u00a0$120\u00a0billion was wiped from the value of the group\u00a0in\u00a0the single biggest one-day loss of value for any company in US market history. The Silicon Valley giant, which for years has served as a reliable cash cow for …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2938,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2937"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2937\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2939,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2937\/revisions\/2939"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}