Facebook $META is nixing its plan to create a class of non-voting stock.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg had proposed the plan so that he could fund his philanthropy efforts by selling stock while still maintaining control of the company, but Facebook has been doing so well, he said on Friday, that the setup will no longer be necessary.
“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,” Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post, explaining his decision to withdraw the proposal.
Zuckerberg said that within the next 18 months he would sell between 35 million and 75 million Facebook shares—between $6 billion and $13 billion worth of stock—to fund his philanthropy.
The announcement comes days before Zuckerberg had been scheduled to testify in a shareholder lawsuit that opposed the plan to reclassify stock, and a month after the S&P 500 said it would bar companies with multiple classes of shares from its index.
