Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and wife giving away 99% of shares

Facebook Inc.FB +2.76% CEO Mark Zuckerberg ?used the occasion of the birth of his first child to announce that over the course of their lives, he and his wife Priscilla Chan will give away 99% of their Facebook shares, currently valued at about $45 billion.

Mr. Zuckerberg ?and his wife, a doctor, said their daughter is named Max. The couple will make their philanthropic donations through a new entity, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, LLC. Its initial areas of focus will be “personalized learning, curing disease, connecting people and building strong communities,” Mr. Zuckerberg said in a in a lengthy letter to his daughter posted Tuesday.

“I will continue to serve as Facebook’s CEO for many, many years to come, but these issues are too important to wait until you or we are older to begin this work,” Mr. Zuckerberg wrote. “By starting at a young age, we hope to see compounding benefits throughout our lives.”

Mr. Zuckerberg owns about 4 million shares of Class A shares in Facebook and approximately 419 million supervoting shares, Facebook said in a securities filing Tuesday.

The vast majority of those shares will be directed toward his philanthropic work. He plans to sell or gift no more than $1 billion of Facebook stock each year for the next three years.

Mr. Zuckerberg said ?he intends to retain his majority voting position in Facebook shares for the foreseeable future, Facebook said in the filing.

“Today your mother and I are committing to spend our lives doing our small part to help solve these challenges,” Mr. Zuckerberg wrote. “As you begin the next generation of the Chan Zuckerberg family, we also begin the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to join people across the world to advance human potential and promote equality for all children in the next generation.”

/By Wall Street Journal/