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Your Retirement Life: A Dire Warning Part IV

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By Kim Britten @ Shutterstock.com

Last week Facebook revealed a data breach affecting 30 million accounts and shares are down about 27% since July. These and other longer-term problems at Facebook have led several public pension funds to back a shareholder proposal to separate Mark Zuckerberg from at least one of his dual roles as CEO and Chairman of the board.

The Wall Street Journal explains though that the problem for the petitioners is Mr. Zuckerberg’s “lock on the bulk of Facebook’s supervoting shares, each of which gives him 10 times the votes of average shareholders. According to Facebook’s latest proxy, his share of the voting power among Facebook investors was 59.9%.”

This structure, favored by start-ups, is a foul ball from the beginning. As Lord Zuck will tell you, “all shares are not created equal.” The issue I have with this is that public pensions are piling on Mr. Zuckerberg demanding he step down from the board. Once again, pensions are proving they put a wet finger in the air to determine public opinion and act accordingly. Now they can say they tried to do something. It’s a little late once they’ve already invested retiree money in a company they knew had corporate governance issues.

Read Parts I, II and III of my series Your Retirement Life: A Dire Warning.

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E.J. Smith - Your Survival Guy

E.J. Smith is Founder of YourSurvivalGuy.com, Managing Director at Richard C. Young & Co., Ltd., a Managing Editor of Richardcyoung.com, and Editor-in-Chief of Youngresearch.com. E.J. graduated from Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, with a B.S. in finance and investments. In 1995, E.J. began his investment career at Fidelity Investments in Boston before joining Richard C. Young & Co., Ltd. in 1998. E.J. has trained at Sig Sauer Academy in Epping, NH. His first drum set was a 5-piece Slingerland with Zilldjians. He grew-up worshiping Neil Peart of the band Rush, and loves the song Tom Sawyer—the name of his family’s boat, a Grady-White Canyon 306. He grew up in Mattapoisett, MA, an idyllic small town on the water near Cape Cod. He spends time in Newport, RI and Bartlett, NH—both as far away from Wall Street as one could mentally get. The Newport office is on a quiet, tree lined street not far from the harbor and the log cabin in Bartlett, NH, the “Live Free or Die” state, sits on the edge of the White Mountain National Forest. He enjoys spending time in Key West and Paris. Please get in touch with E.J. at ejsmith@yoursurvivalguy.com