Meta warns of the risk posed by Mark Zuckerberg practicing combat sports

A Bloomberg columnist he joked a few months ago So, to avoid possible lawsuits from investors, Meta should warn in its annual reports and issue brochures about Mark Zuckerberg's love of judo and other combat sports. At least, he argued, when Elon Musk's challenge to a cage fight was up in the air, the lawyers would have a little fun writing the notice. Whether Meta's advisors read that column or not, the company registered its annual report last Friday and it included the founder and head of the company's fondness for high-risk sports as a risk factor.

“We currently depend on the continuity of services and performance of our key personnel, including Mark Zuckerberg,” the company says in its annual report. “Mr. Zuckerberg and certain other members of management engage in a variety of high-risk activities, such as combat sports, extreme sports, and recreational aviation, which carry the risk of serious injury and death. If Mr. Zuckerberg were to become unavailable for any reason, there could be a material adverse impact on our operations,” he adds.

Beyond that the Bloomberg columnist has declared victory, The warning collected is one more demonstration of how companies try to cover themselves in their chapters of risk factors from possible lawsuits for not having been transparent when exposing to the market the threats they face. In these chapters, companies point out very real risks, but they also let their imagination run wild and put themselves in the worst-case scenario.

Dozens of risks of different types are outlined in Meta's annual report. The chapter dedicated to them occupies 36 pages, more than a quarter of the entire annual report. The risks listed relate to its product and service offering, finance, regulation, data and shareholding structure and range from Zuckerberg's love of combat sports to the risk of negative news being published about the company.

If a company's stock falls sharply as a result of an event the risk of which was not warned in the prospectuses and annual reports, the chances of suffering a class-action lawsuit or charges of securities fraud multiply. responsible for the company. Multiple American law firms are constantly monitoring companies' stock market declines in case they are offered the opportunity to file a lawsuit against them in which their shareholders join. After the bearish attack by Gotham City Research, the Spanish Grifols acknowledged that at least 13 law firms are preparing class action lawsuits against the company in the United States.

In previous annual reports from Meta, they warned of the importance that Mark Zuckerberg's permanence in the company had for the company, but without any reference to his hobbies or those of the rest of the management team. This new mention of “high-risk activities, such as combat sports, extreme sports and recreational aviation” comes after the fight – in the end only dialectical, to the disappointment of many – between Zuckerberg and Tesla boss Elon Musk.

The two challenged each other online in June to a fight in a cage in Las Vegas. Musk threw down the gauntlet and Zuckerberg picked it up. The jokes continued for some time until Zuckerberg said, apparently disappointed, that if the fight was never going to happen, it was better to move on. In September, Musk's biographer, Walter Isaacson, explained that the challenge was never serious: “It's a total joke. It's a metaphor. He's not going to get into a cage to fight Mark Zuckerberg. He has a schoolboy sense of humor in which he trolls people. He makes jokes. And other people do not understand that one of his personalities is that of a youthful prankster,” he said in an interview with EL PAÍS.

Even if it is not against Elon Musk, if Zuckerberg is knocked out in a fight or another of those activities that carry “risk of serious injury and death,” the company will be able to say that it has already warned.

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