Facebook IPO shows fat Executive Compensation

Facebook has filed for Initial Public Offering (IPO) to sell its stock public.  Facebook’s estimated value is about $100 billion and it is hoping to raise $5 billion by selling share. Paperwork filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission suggests that a lot of people are going to get rich.

Facebook claims to have 845 million members who are rich source of advertising income. Facebook users upload 250 million photos a day, signal that they “like” items posted by friends about 2.7 billion times a day, and have created a web of 100 billion friends and connections on its site. 

The company makes majority of its money from selling display ads targeted to its users who provide facebook with their person lifestyle data as a condition of registering at the website. Last year, Facebook had $1 billion in profits on revenue of $3.7 billion.

Executive Compensation seems to be generous. A list of executives and their compensation indicates that their wallet are getting fat and fatter.

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO: Zuckerberg made a salary of $483,333 in 2011, in addition to a $220,500 bonus for the first half of 2011. He also received “other” compensation — which covers such things as chartered travel costs and security details — that totaled $783,529. Overall, Zuckerberg received $1,487,362 for 2011,

Sheryl Sandberg, COO:  Sandberg had a salary and bonus of $381,966 in 2011, but was also granted about $30 million in stock awards. Ms Sandberg, who already holds 1.9 million shares in the social network also has  options on a further 38.1 million shares vest over the next five years.

David Ebersman, CFO: David Ebersman, one of the most important Facebook executives that you’ve never heard of, also made $381,966 in salary and bonuses. With stock, his total compensation comes to $18.6 million.

Mike Schroepfer, VP of Engineering:Mike Schroepfer, the vice president of engineering, made $333,833 in salary and bonuses in 2011. Combined with his bonus and stock awards, he made $24.7 million last year.

Theodore W. Ullyot, VP, General Counsel and Secretary: Theodore Ullyot made $749,583 in salary and bonus and was granted about $6 million in stock awards and $110,644 in other compensation..


Large shareholders

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, holds the most shares — 533.8 million, owning about 28 percent of the company. They will be valued at around $28 billion.

Sheryl Sandberg, COO, holds 1.9 million shares in the social network also has  options on a further 38.1 million shares vest over the next five years.

Peter Thiel, PayPal co-founder, tech entrepreneur, investor and philanthropist has served on Facebook's board since April 2005. According to Facebook's IPO filing, Thiel holds 44.7 million shares which is about 2.5 percent of the company.

Donald Graham, chief executive officer and chairman of the board for The Washington Post Company, has been on Facebook's board of directors for almost three years. Graham holds 1 million restricted stock units.

David Ebersman has been Facebook's chief financial officer since September 2009. Prior to that he served as the CFO for biotechnology firm Genentech. According to the filing, Ebersman holds 2.2 million shares.

Mike Schroepfer, Facebook Vice President of Engineering, has been in his position since September 2008. Before coming to the tech sensation, Schroepfer worked at Mozilla and Sun Microsystems. He holds 2.1 million shares.

 

Marc Andreessen ,Internet browser pioneer, has been a Facebook board member since June 2008. He co-founded venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and Netscape Communications. He holds 3.6 million shares.

Ted Ullyot, Facebook General Counsel, holds 1.9 million shares.

Dustin Moskovitz , Facebook co-founder, holds 133.8 million shares, owning 7.6 percent of the company.

Jim Breyer, a managing partner with venture capital firm Accel Partners. holds 201.4 million shares, or 11.4 percent of the company. He is also a board member of Facebook and has been serving in that position since April 2005.


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Reference:
IPO Filing, Facebook

Director James Cameron moving to New Zealand near Megaupload Kim Dotcom

James Ca

According to news reports, movie director James Cameron wants to leave Hollywood and move to New Zealand.

New Zealand is becoming a popular home for people connected to some sort of movie and media business. James Cameron is connected to movies like Terminator, Titanic and Avatar.

Kim Dotcom mnsion

Kim Dotcom, megaupload

Another popular person recently in the news, Kim Dotcom, also resides in New Zealand. Kim Dotcom has made a few documentaries of his life style. Kim lives in a huge mansion with over 13 luxury cars. He is mainly known for starting a very popular file sharing website ‘Megaupload.” Megaupload website based in Hong Kong used to get over 50 million hits a day. However, recently, the website was shut down at the initiative of the US authorities citing Megaupload’s involvement in copyright piracy.

German born Kim Dotcom lives in New Zealand. He was arrested by New Zealand police and is waiting extradition to the U.S. We don’t know whether he will still be around and be a neighbor to James Cameron. If they decide to team up, it will be mega combination of a movie maker and an expert in distribution over the internet.

Ron Paul against Internet Censorship

(Source: Congressman Ron Paul’s weekly Straight Talk)

Although Congress was back in session for scarcely more than a day last week, private citizens across the country managed to cause an uproar felt across Capitol Hill.  The uproar took the form of hundreds of thousands of phone calls to both Senators and Representatives, urging them to oppose two draconian new bills that threaten the free and unbridled flow of information on the internet.

On Wednesday last week, dozens of prominent websites like Wikipedia, Reddit, and Craigslist, were blacked out in protest of two bills known in DC jargon as SOPA and PIPA.  SOPA is the House bill; PIPA is its Senate companion. These bills ostensibly will combat internet piracy, and of course we also are told they will help us wage the never ending "war on terror."

What these bills actually do is force website owners to police the internet; create entry barriers to the only relatively free and open medium of communication; and threaten to break the technological structure of the internet itself.  They also violate our 1st Amendment right to freedom of speech and our 4th Amendment freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. 

SOPA and PIPA have been drafted not only without respect for the Constitution, but also without an understanding of the how the internet works.  These bills attack the very system upon which the entire orderly organization of the web depends.  Search engines, internet service providers, advertising sites, and sites with user-generated content such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter--all magnificent creations of the market-- are directly threatened by these bills. They will be held responsible if even a single of their millions of users posts even one link to a website that a copyright holder claims is violating a copyright.

Note that under the bills as written, the Department of Justice or a copyright holder do not have to prove that their copyright was violated-- they simply have to claim copyright infringement and an entire site is shut down.  The burden of these regulations on the internet will be enormous, shifting resources away from productivity and innovation and into monitoring and censoring.  It turns internet companies into involuntary tools for Big Brother government, further eroding our Constitutional rights.

As is typical of so many bills in Congress, SOPA and PIPA were not crafted to make life better for the American people, but rather were written at the behest of big business trying to enlist the federal government as its strong-arm.  For example, the Motion Picture Association of America spent more than $1.2 million so far lobbying for their passage.

But the internet community is fighting back effectively, not just with websites that went black but with millions of users who expressed their solidarity.  Congressional sponsors of both bills have been jumping ship in response to the outrage. The House Judiciary Committee canceled the SOPA hearing they were planning to hold last Wednesday; the House leadership announced they have no intention of considering this bill; and at the end of the week Senator Reid announced he was postponing the vote until a "compromise" could be reached.  The American people are speaking, and with their continued grassroots efforts the marketplace for free ideas and communication will prevail over government controls and censorship.

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Source: Congressman Ron Paul’s weekly Straight Talk

January 23, 2012Stop Internet Censorship

http://paul.house.gov/