Facebook case deals blow to 'founder power'

San Francisco

SILICON Valley spent more than a decade finding ways to give company founders more control. When Facebook Inc tried to follow suit, shareholders pushed back.

Google started it with a 2004 initial public offering that gave co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin voting rights well beyond their economic stakes in the search giant. Groupon Inc, Zynga Inc and Facebook did it too, and this year Snap Inc sold stock with no voting rights at all.