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Investors to Facebook: more women, please
Wed, 8th Feb 2012
FYI, this story is more than a year old

Just a week after announcing plans for an Initial Public Offering, social networking giant Facebook has been criticised for the lack of women on its board of directors.

In a letter to Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, investment group the California State Teachers' Retirement System (CalSTRS) says if the company is planning on going public, it should consider adding some diversity to its directors.

"[The lack of diversity] is particularly glaring at a time when there is clear evidence that companies with diverse boards perform far better than the companies with more homogenous boards,” CalSTRS corporate governance director Anne Sheehan writes.

CalSTRS has money in Facebook via its private equity investments, and plans to buy stock when the company goes public.

Facebook has only seven members on its board: Zuckerberg, Marc Andreessen, Erskine Bowles, James Breyer, Donald Graham, Reed Hastings and Peter Thiel.

Do you think Facebook could use some women on its board of directors? Or is a company that could be worth up to US$100 billion doing just fine already, thank you very much? Post your comments below.