Money Stuff
Zuckerbaby.
Congratulations to Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan on the birth last week of their daughter Maxima, which, like all births of all babies, they announced on Facebook. They also announced — in a letter purportedly written to little Max , although at a surprisingly high reading level for a one-week-old — that they’d be giving away 99 percent of their Facebook stock to the "Chan Zuckerberg Initiative," a charitable organization whose "initial areas of focus will be personalized learning, curing disease, connecting people and building strong communities." When completed, this giveaway could leave them only twice as rich as Mitt Romney .
But it will take some time to get there. Unlike most birth announcements, Max’s came with a Securities and Exchange Commission filing , in which Facebook reassured investors: Mr. Zuckerberg has established a new entity, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, LLC, and he will control the voting and disposition of any shares held by such entity. He has informed us that he plans to sell or gift no more than $1 billion of Facebook stock each year for the next three years and that he intends to retain his majority voting position in our stock for the foreseeable future. You can actually see the moment where Facebook investors thought that Zuckerberg might be relinquishing control: The stock dipped sharply, then rebounded. It turns out that Zuckerberg’s personal control of Facebook’s voting stock is worth billions of dollars to other investors. Apparently they think he’s good at connecting people and building strong communities.
One hipster criticism of this massive donation is that it is a tax avoidance scheme: By donating the money to his foundation to be spent on pet causes (or even for-profit investments ), Zuckerberg avoids having that money taxed and spent on causes that […]
