Facebook Investors Call For Zuckerberg’s Ouster As Chairman

Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg is in the crosshairs of some major investors, including public pension funds and state officials who want the CEO ousted from the social media company.

According to CNBC, New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer said Facebook’s board needs to make a real commitment to addressing the risks. “We need Facebook’s insular boardroom to make a serious commitment to addressing real risks — reputational, regulatory and the risk to our democracy — that impact the company, its share owners, and ultimately the hard-earned pensions of thousands of New York City workers,” he told CNBC.

The report noted that the proposal to remove Zuckerberg from the CEO job and the board is a symbolic one, since Zuckerberg has control of the board. Stringer is adding his name to a previous proposal put forth by Trillium Asset Management in which the investor called on Zuckerberg to step down.

“An independent board chair is essential to moving Facebook forward from this mess, and to reestablish trust with Americans and investors alike,” Stringer, who oversees the New York City $160 billion pension fund, added in the statement to CNBC. Rhode Island, Illinois and Pennsylvania state treasurers are also joining the initiative.

The calls on the part of investors come on the heels of a disclosure by Facebook in late September that roughly 50 million of its users had their data exposed through an attack on its network. Facebook found that attackers were able to take control of user accounts through a function within the platform’s code, The New York Times reported at the time. Following the discovery, Facebook had the vulnerability fixed and reached out to authorities. More than 90 million users had to log out of their accounts as a result of the breach, which has been described as a typical measure taken with comprised accounts.

“We’re taking it really seriously,” Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg told reporters in a conference call. “We have a major security effort at the company that hardens all of our surfaces.” Zuckerberg also told reporters, “I’m glad we found this. But it definitely is an issue that this happened in the first place.”