My take on the Facebook IPO. From this morning’s Observer

There are two classes of share – A and B. Each class B share carries 10 times the voting rights of its class A counterpart. Zuck owns 27.1% of the class B shares outright and the company’s pre-IPO filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission revealed agreements with other owners of class B shares to assign their voting rights to him. The net result is that he has voting control over at least 57.1% of the class B shares. In other words, he’s omnipotent.

This would be a problem even if Zuck had the brains of Einstein and the wisdom of Solomon. But, alas, he doesn’t. He is undoubtedly a smart and talented guy, but he also happens to have a megalomaniacal obsession – that everything has to be social, ie public. And if you’re a Facebook user and don’t like that – well, tough.

So we now have another powerful media company with a shareholding structure that renders its charismatic, single-minded founder immune from shareholder pressure. Remind you of anyone? Hint: it begins with “News”.