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Facebook Businesses Social Networks The Almighty Buck United States Technology

Shareholder Sues Facebook After Stock Plunge (reuters.com) 111

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Facebook and its chief executive Mark Zuckerberg were sued on Friday in what could be the first of many lawsuits over a disappointing earnings announcement by the social media company that wiped out about $120 billion of shareholder wealth. The complaint filed by shareholder James Kacouris in Manhattan federal court accused Facebook, Zuckerberg and Chief Financial Officer David Wehner of making misleading statements about or failing to disclose slowing revenue growth, falling operating margins, and declines in active users. Kacouris said the marketplace was "shocked" when "the truth" began to emerge on Wednesday from the Menlo Park, California-based company. He said the 19 percent plunge in Facebook shares the next day stemmed from federal securities law violations by the defendants. The lawsuit seeks class-action status and unspecified damages.
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Shareholder Sues Facebook After Stock Plunge

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  • Who gives a shit about their address?

    • when it actually mattered where a company was located. Before offshore tax havens, outsourcing and globalization in general made it a moot point.
    • Who gives a shit about their address?

      It's a journalism technique. Paraphrasing the subject of a story reduces repetition of her/his/its name over and over again. It reads better.

      The technique can have amusing consequences if taken too far. Once, a CBC reporter was doing a story about bananas, and the reporter's editor insisted that he reduce the number of repetitions of the word "banana." His solution? Refer to it as "yellow, tubular fruit."

  • At the top of the page: 'Did you know subscribers can see articles in the future?'

    Please, subscribers, when you see a dup 'from the future', please try and get the eds to cancel it. That would save some from apoplectic outrage and the rest of us (most) from a minor annoyance.

    Please help us! You are our only hope!

  • next, he'll sue the weather for not being what he expected if he goes to the beach and it starts raining

    • Have some sympathy! Zuckerberg lost a lot of money. Think how he feels about that. Should we each send him a dollar?

      (Today's joke. That the best I can do.)
    • More ironic, is that the plunge was in a great part due to shareholder panic. The "disappointing" earnings were still very good earnings.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    'Web 2.0' was always a farce riddled with flimsy ethics, so is the 'sharing' economy (and a great many people sounded alarms, nobody cared to listen, they heard their greed instead) and I don't doubt we will see more and more companies eating similar crow. Let's hope the bubble doesn't completely burst, as it would be far worse than the original tech bubble.

  • I have always wanted to own Facebook, it has caused me pain that I cannot own it due to the manipulation by shareholders to drive up the price. Can I sue the shareholders for inflating the price beyond my means?

  • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 29, 2018 @10:14AM (#57028072)

    Businesses can only grow so fast and only so much. But people bid the prices up as if there is unlimited growth potential.

    And when stocks are valued with a growth premium that can never be met, they have a tendency to crash when those lofty expectations aren't meant.

    facebook is still quite profitable but wasn't worth what it was trading at.

    I think the same way about Amazon and definitely the same about Tesla. Neither of those companies can meet the growth that is priced into the share price.

  • by nukenerd ( 172703 ) on Sunday July 29, 2018 @10:26AM (#57028130)

    FTFA :

    failing to disclose slowing revenue growth

    So the rate of increase is slowing? - that's just awful. But is the rate of the slowing of the increase itself slowing or increasing? - that's what everyone is asking. And is the rate of that increasing (or slowing) of the rate of the slowing of the increase, itself slowing or increasing? How TF can we be drawing graphs and making predictions if they don't tell us these things?

    I'm crying a river here for poor Mr Kacouris and my hankies are running out. Let's kickstart a collection for him.

  • It's just another social network in the long line of networks that will come and go. Who's surprised?

  • by Timothy2.0 ( 4610515 ) on Sunday July 29, 2018 @10:37AM (#57028204)
    Buying any stock entails *risk*. You're not entitled to the value of that stock to go up. If you buy a stock and it plummets because of shitty corporate policy, *you* invested in a company with shitty corporate policy. Eat your mistake.
    • by Wrath0fb0b ( 302444 ) on Sunday July 29, 2018 @02:00PM (#57029180)

      Buying any stock entails *risk*. You're not entitled to the value of that stock to go up. If you buy a stock and it plummets because of shitty corporate policy, *you* invested in a company with shitty corporate policy. Eat your mistake.

      This is only part-way true. A corporation still has substantial duties with regard to its shareholders. For instance, they can't just spend all the year's profit on hookers and blow for the board. Nor can they flat out lie.

      Of course this case should be laughed out of court. But don't go so far as to say that companies have no duty whatsoever to their shareholders or that all shareholder cases are laughable.

    • Facebook has tons of fiduciary responsibility. So much so that it's almost impossible for them to meet every obligation to a standard that a clever lawyer couldn't argue they're at fault and win.

      Our ruling class are universally investors. They don't do math. They don't make things. They don't do medicine and they don't cook. They invest. So you better believe the law is designed to protect them above all else.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • by crashumbc ( 1221174 ) on Sunday July 29, 2018 @10:41AM (#57028224)

    Please be aware these "lawsuits" are usually just scams to suck more money from desperate stock holders. The "lawyers" are the financial version of ambulance chasers.

    Anytime a company loses a large percentage of stock value, a lawsuit is announced. For you to be part of the "class action suit" you need to pay the law firm a non-refundable deposit of usually between 200-600 dollars. The kicker is the lawsuit never actually happens and the client is out even more money.

    • by DRJlaw ( 946416 )

      For you to be part of the "class action suit" you need to pay the law firm a non-refundable deposit of usually between 200-600 dollars. The kicker is the lawsuit never actually happens and the client is out even more money.

      As much as I dislike shareholder and shareholder derivative suits, no, that is not how it works.

      There is no form of class action where the class is "people who paid us." There is no class action where the damages recovered, if any, vary by "people who paid us." At worst, the attorneys h

  • If you are a short term trader, it really sucks to have a 20% drop. If you are a long term trader, Facebook as done well. After the IPO it was publicly available for about $40, which makes up up about 350%. The average annual return over the life of the stock is about 27%, well over the market's annual average return of about 10%.
    • by Anonymous Coward
      Back when I used a broker, he'd say "depends on when you bought it" - he told me a lot of truth, but he went out of business...
  • IThe shareholders are at fault for not dumping a dying stock. People are leaving facebook in droves and they arent getting enough new sign ups. Might be time to dump that myspace stock too.

  • For all that talk about Tesla going bankwupt, the shorts are talking about 750 million mark to market profits on May first week stock at 290, 2 billion m-2-m loss in June at 370, back to 1 billion loss right now, waiting for the conference call.

    For all that mind share and news share Tesla got, the whole company was valued at just 50 billion. And these shorts missed the biggest opportunity to profit in Facebook? Did any of them make a killing? Which shorting hedge fund made a killing?

  • Not sure how anyone could be surprised about this. If you're an investor, you damn well better be paying attention to what the company is doing, and in April when Mark Zuckerberg delivered his prepared testimony to Congress, he laid it all out:

    "I've directed our teams to invest so much in security — on top of the other investments we're making — that it will significantly impact our profitability going forward. But I want to be clear about what our priority is: protecting our community is more i

  • If Kacouris can sue Facebook for losing value, or rather not telling him in advance to dump his stock in them,

    then other stock holders can sue Kacouris for sueing Facebook, thereby causing tge company to lose value, without telling them in advance.

    I doubt that any judge would rule in Kacouris' "favour", but I would laugh if they did.

  • Hey, you bought stock. Stock isn't a guarantee. If you were smart, the changes should have worried you to get out, but, because of your greed, you didn't think it would happen.
  • Maybe they should sue themselves for negligence for being stupid enough to invest in Facebook. Anyone anywhere ever could tell you that's not a good investment and it's a dying company that 100% of their customers hate.
  • They were shocked? Must not have listened to or read the Q1 earnings call.

    "In terms of our overall 2018 revenue outlook, we continue to anticipate revenue growth rates will decelerate on a constant currency basis throughout the year."

    And one of the questions asked included this tidbit: "Growth in MAUs in rest of world was up about 11%; I think last year, it was up almost double that, 19% or so. Anything changed there that maybe could explain the slowdown?"

    Q1 Earnings Transcript: https://seekingalph [seekingalpha.com]
  • I guess nobody saw the other post that mentioned this?
    https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]

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