Facebook's Zuckerberg pledges to give 99% of shares to charity

San Francisco

MARK Zuckerberg, the co-founder and chief executive of Facebook, announced on Tuesday that he and his wife would give 99 per cent of their Facebook shares "during our lives" - holdings currently worth more than US$45 billion - to charitable purposes.

The pledge was made in an open letter to their newborn daughter, Max, who was born about a week ago.

Mr Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, said that they were forming a new organisation, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, to manage the money, through an unusual limited liability corporate structure.

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