As VentureBeat’s Jolie O’Dell pointed out yesterday, Mark Zuckerberg managed to strike a deal with some key investors and friends that gives him 57 percent of the shareholder voting power. For a public company, it’s an almost unheard of concentration of authority, a troubling sign for those who focus on shareholder rights.
“The public has no say in the control of the board, which in my view is terribly harmful to any notion of accountability,” Charles Elson, a University of Delaware corporate-governance professor, told Bloomberg. ”It’s very troubling to investors, and it’s a bad bet for them.”
