So, at what point does Zuckerberg become drive the company into such levels of toxicity that every investor does what they should have done in the first place, and pulls out?
If "the Market" truly solves everything, after all, it should be possible to leave Facebook high and dry with no public funding left because Zuckerberg has made his business and himself a veritable pariah.
It probably won't happen though. He's basically set himself up as the subject of a permanent condition of Stockholm Syndrome with regard to any investors.
With a majority vote built in for him, any concession to the public is essentially a "let them eat cake" sort of deal.
Ironically, investors pulling out might be good for Zuckerberg.
If a business is highly profitable but the investors don't see it that way, then it may make sense for him to take the company private again.
This happened with Dell about 6 years ago. Michael Dell believed Dell was worth much more, but the market disagreed. He was able to buy back all the shares and take it private again.
The big impediment to Facebook doing the same thing is that it uses huge RSU grants as a carrot to attract talent. Go private, and suddenly they need to make up for the 40%+ drop from somewhere.
It doesn't really affect FB one way or the other. They made their profit at the IPO. That's all the cash they get out of it. Zuckerberg himself (and other executives) would lose a lot of money if every investor pulled out, but Facebook would continue happily along.
Ultimately, you can't get every investor to pull out because the stocks still entitle them to a piece of corporate profits, even without control. Facebook has a P/E of 24, corresponding to earning about 3% interest. There will always be a market for that cash. (Investors seem to think it will ultimately be more profitable than that, so the price is higher than the last 12 months of profit indicate.)
If "the Market" truly solves everything, after all, it should be possible to leave Facebook high and dry with no public funding left because Zuckerberg has made his business and himself a veritable pariah.
It probably won't happen though. He's basically set himself up as the subject of a permanent condition of Stockholm Syndrome with regard to any investors.
With a majority vote built in for him, any concession to the public is essentially a "let them eat cake" sort of deal.