One of Facebook’s major investors is calling on the social network to drop CEO Mark Zuckerberg from its board as part of a management shakeup.
Scott Stringer, New York City Comptroller and the person in charge of investing the city’s $195bn pension fund, called on Facebook to add three new independent members to its board of directors and remove Zuckerberg as chairman of the board.
Stringer, who estimates his city’s fund has sunk about $1bn into purchasing Facebook shares, called on the board to make changes in the wake of revelations on the company’s cooperation with Cambridge Analytica in the run-up to the 2016 elections.
While Stringer says he does not plan to pull the Big Apple’s investment bucks out of Facebook, he is calling directly on the board to consider his request for a shake-up in the wake of a data scandal that saw the company lop $50bn from its market cap and lose the trust of many users.
Currently, Facebook’s board of directors consists of Zuckerberg (who is chairman), COO Sheryl Sandberg, VCs Marc Andreesen, Peter Thiel, Erskine Bowles, and Kenneth Chenault, Gates Foundation CEO Susan Desmond Hellmann, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, and WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum.
“We think there needs to be more independent board oversight, I think there needs to be an independent chairman of the board,” Stringer said in a TV interview.
“I think we need more independent directors, and directors that have experience in terms of data, and ethics, and all the things that these emerging huge companies need in light of what’s happened.”
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