Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg makes a keynote speech at the Meta Connect annual event at the company's headquarters in Menlo Park, California, U.S., September 25, 2024. REUTERS/Manuel Orbegozo

By Tom Hals

WILMINGTON, Delaware (Reuters) -Mark Zuckerberg and current and former leaders of Meta Platforms agreed to pay the company $190 million to resolve shareholder allegations that they damaged Meta by violating Facebook users' privacy, according to a settlement unveiled on Thursday.

The company's board also agreed to policy changes governing directors' conduct, insider trading and whistleblower protections.

The deal ended litigation by shareholders who accused the Facebook co-founder and other defendants of saddling the company with billions of dollars in fines and legal costs stemming from violating privacy regulations.

SHAREHOLDERS ONCE SOUGHT $8 BILLION

The agreement fleshes out a deal announced in court on July 17 that ended a scheduled eight-day trial on its second day. Shareholders were seeking $8 billion from Zuckerberg and 10 current and former directors and officers for allegedly allowing Facebook users' personal information to be accessed without their consent.

The defendants had denied all allegations.

The settlement dramatically cut short the trial before a string of high-profile witnesses took the stand, including Zuckerberg, billionaire investor and Meta board member Marc Andreessen, former Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, and former Facebook board members Peter Thiel, the co-founder of Palantir Technologies, and Reed Hastings, the co-founder of Netflix.

Facebook in 2021 changed its name to Meta, which is also the parent company of Instagram and WhatsApp. The company was not a defendant.

Derivative lawsuits recover money from directors and executives, which is paid to the company and therefore benefits shareholders indirectly.

California State Teachers’ Retirement System, one of the shareholders who brought the case, said it was the second-largest settlement ever of a derivative case in Delaware.

CRITICISM OF DELAWARE

Companies, including Meta, have left or considered ditching Delaware as their legal home after Elon Musk had his $56 billion pay package from Tesla voided by the Delaware court, fueling criticism that the court was overly favorable toward shareholder lawsuits.

“When we leverage our voice and use tools such as litigation effectively, it benefits both companies and shareholders long-term,” said CalSTRS board Chair Denise Bradford in a statement.

The plaintiffs' firms that brought the case will seek a fee of up to 30% of the settlement and $4.8 million in expenses, also paid from the settlement, according to court documents.

The settlement was paid from directors' and officers' liability insurance policies.

The shareholders who brought the case claimed directors failed to oversee Zuckerberg and Sandberg, who were allowed to run an illegal data-harvesting enterprise.

The lawsuit was filed in the wake of the scandal surrounding Cambridge Analytica, a now-defunct British political consulting firm.

The firm secretly accessed data from tens of millions of Facebook users to create targeted messages for clients that included Donald Trump during his successful U.S. presidential campaign in 2016. Officials from Trump's 2016 campaign have said Cambridge Analytica played a minor role in the election.

Those revelations led to a record $5 billion fine by the Federal Trade Commission and a series of other legal settlements. Zuckerberg was also accused of trading Meta stock to benefit from inside information.

The defendants said the evidence at trial would have shown that Facebook had robust operations to protect user data. They accused Cambridge Analytica of deceit.

"We sent a clear message that even the most powerful directors and officers must take their oversight obligations seriously," said Maxwell Huffman, a Scott + Scott attorney who represented investors.

(Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware; Editing by Matthew Lewis, Nia Williams, Rod Nickel)