Meta’s stocks have taken a serious beating lately, with its price shedding more than 13 percent over the past month. That fact isn’t likely to ease pressure in the trillion-dollar megacorp’s board room, as tensions between CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his board of directors reach a boiling point.
As the Wall Street Journal phrased it in new reporting, the conflict between Zuckerberg and his board have amounted to a “war over power and money.” Over the past few months, the paper reports, Zuckerberg has demanded a massive stock-heavy pay raise from Meta’s directorate, forcing an impasse so fraught that numerous board members have threatened to resign if the CEO doesn’t back down.
According to documents viewed by the WSJ, a negotiation team made up of three members of the board began preparing a contingency plan in early September, to use in the event that Zuckerberg refused to back down from his compensation demands. That standby plan reportedly included “resignation from the board” by the negotiation team as a last resort.
Though the squabble is playing out over Zuckerberg’s salary, the source of the conflict traces back to the CEO’s rampant spending on AI.
