Meta, the owner of Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp, is thinking of changing where it is incorporated by Delaware into another state, two people with knowledge of the matter said.
The company is considering Texas and a handful of other states, said that people, who had not been authorized to talk about confidential discussions. The process is at an early stage and no decision has been made, they added, and Meta’s corporate headquarters will remain in Menlo Park, California.
Meta has gone through a corporate review under Mark Zuckerberg, founder and chief executive of the company. Mr Zuckerberg has spent the last two years making working -class cuts so that the company operates faster and effectively. More recently, it has aggressively aggressively, President Trump and Washington Policy Officers, as they have set an agenda on issues such as antitrust and artificial intelligence that will affect the largest technology companies.
A Meta spokesman refused to comment on a possible reconnection. The Wall Street Journal said earlier that the company could get out of Delaware and redefine Texas or elsewhere.
Since Meta was founded as Facebook in 2004, it is incorporated into Delaware. Many lawsuits of shareholders are submitted to Delaware’s courts and transport transfers from various cases, including one coming from a scandal against the privacy of users related to Cambridge Analytica in 2018.
Integration into another state that may be more favorable to companies and not the plaintiffs in the action category could help META in future shareholder differences, people said.
Last year, Elon Musk’s private rocket company, SpaceX, changed its integration into Texas by Delaware. Mr Musk made the move weeks after a Delaware judge to cancel his remuneration package to Tesla, the electric vehicle manufacturer he drives.
This case was filed by Tesla shareholders, who challenged a package of shares that allowed Mr Musk to obtain about 304 million Tesla shares at a predetermined price if the company achieved certain targets. The judge decided that Mr Musk had effectively allowed his own plan to compensate more than $ 50 billion at the time, with the help of compatible members of the Board of Directors.
“Someone could read this as a bet that because Musk moved Tesla and some of his other companies in Texas, the results of customers will be that he will develop a control -friendly case -law,” said Eric Talley, a corporate Law and Professor of Governance at Columbia Law School.
In recent years, the Delaware Chancery court has also issued decisions in other cases that have increased the previous case law to the state and has sent a resonance through legal circles on long -term corporate governance practices. Some of these decisions have authorized shareholders and disadvantaged corporate councils of the Directors.
Meta has a dual -class stock structure that effectively gives Mr Zuckerberg complete control of its company and board, which could be challenged by recent Delaware decisions.
Integration in Texas is easier for established companies such as Meta and Tesla, Mr Talley said. A newer company still seems more legal and reliable for shareholders if it has been incorporated into Delaware because the state has stricter legal requirements for operation, he said.
“The hope that Musk and Zuckerberg have is that the Courts in Texas will be much more permissible to do what they want, even if it entails a conflict of interests,” Mr Talley said. “There is a much longer leash in Texas.”
