Chinmay Bidkar
23 September 2017, India:
Mark Zuckerberg, World’s fifth richest man has plans to sell 18% of his shares in Facebook that is worth $12.8 Billion. Zuckerberg, 33, and wife Priscilla Chan, 32, have a $72.4 billion fortune, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. They had pledged in December 2015 to sell most of their Facebook shares over time to invest in philanthropic causes, Bloomberg reported.
Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook, “Over the past year and a half, Facebook’s business has performed well and the value of our stock has grown to the point that I can fully fund our philanthropy and retain voting control of Facebook for 20 years or more. As a result, I’ve asked our board to withdraw the proposal to reclassify our stock — and the board has agreed.”
He further added, “I want to be clear: this doesn’t change Priscilla and my plans to give away 99% of our Facebook shares during our lives. In fact, we now plan to accelerate our work and sell more of those shares sooner. I anticipate selling 35-75 million Facebook shares in the next 18 months to fund our work in education, science, and advocacy.”
Zuckerberg now holds 53% of the votes. If he sold 35 million shares, his voting stake would be 50.6%. But if he sold 75 Million, he would rely on the votes he controls that belong to co-founder Dustin Muskovitz to retain a majority. (Image- Wired)
Also read:
- Workplace Messaging App Slack Raises $250 Million Funding from SoftBank
- Facebook Announces Video Service ‘Watch’ to Take on YouTube