Javier Oliván has gone from the beginning of this year to join the ranks of the Spanish subsidiary of Meta, with the owner of Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp. The Huesca executive, Mark Zuckerberg’s right-hand man at the technology giant for the last five years, will work remotely from our country for the entire holding company. He will keep his position as global head of operations (COO for its acronym in English), that is, he will continue to serve as ‘number 2’. He will receive a fixed salary of almost one million euros to which variable bonuses will be added.
In the official documentation of Meta, consulted by La Información, Facebook Spain SL, the subsidiary with which the group has operated in this country for more than a decade, confirms the hiring of the full-time executive. “He will be considered a remote worker in Spain,” they assure him. He will work under Zuckerberg’s direction and will continue in his previous position. His termination date as an employee of Meta Platform, the US-based parent company, is January 1 of this year.
Oliván (Sabiñánigo, 1977) continues to have a good part of his family in this country. But keeping the second-biggest executive of a company like Meta remote is a significant decision. Despite the fact that he will be able to travel as usual, there will be a relevant time difference on a day-to-day basis. Menlo Park is the headquarters of Meta in California (United States). It is nine hours less than in Spain. The economic newspaper The Wall Street Journal already explained last March that part of the company’s management team, including Zuckerberg himself, were adopting this work in remote locations in faraway places in Silicon Valley.
From Spain, without mentioning the city of residence, the director will earn a fixed annual salary of 939,000 euros. This payroll, which is very similar to the one earned by her predecessor Sheryl Sandberg, includes any additional amount required, which will be paid on a pro-rated basis each month. Added to this is the discretionary bonus of up to a target of 75% of your “basic eligible earnings” as reflected in the pool bonus plan.
On the day of termination, he was paid his accrued but unused vacations and “all his earned but unpaid salary.” Despite the fact that his compensation will be paid by the Spanish subsidiary, since his contract arose from it and his payroll will swell the personnel expenses of the local company, logically he will continue to report to Zuckerberg. They make it clear in the job offer, signed a couple of weeks ago by the executive, that he must update the usual workplace on the Workday platform under the umbrella of “remote office”.
You can take advantage of the visa for digital nomads included in the ‘startup law’, which will imply a significantly lower taxation
It should be remembered that the entry into force of the so-called ‘startup law’ on January 1 of this year also includes a series of improvements in the tax regime of Non-Resident Income Tax applicable to managers and employees of startups, investors and “digital nomads” – people working from home temporarily displaced to Spanish territory – and their families, who will be able to access a special visa for up to five years. Of salaries, up to the first 600,000 euros will be taxed at 24% while from that amount onwards it will be taxed at 47%.
The Spanish executive has several Spanish companies from which he executes personal investments in the country. In the United States, he has declared shareholdings with various equity firms (Olivan D LLC, Olivan Reinhold and Reinhold LLC), some of which he shares with his wife Veronika Reinhold. In Spain he has three brands that were created between 2019 and 2021: Olivan Equity SL, Olivan Reinhold Family SL and Olivan Properties SL. The latter shares it with his sister, Ana. In Olivan Reinhold Family there was a change a couple of months ago: his father, Florian Oliván, was appointed proxy.
Last November, the Electronics engineer at the Tecnun (University of Navarra) campus in San Sebastián cashed in a million-dollar package of Meta Platforms shares that is part of his remuneration as the new ‘number 2’. He sold 11,715 titles for an import of 1.3 million dollars. It was not an open market operation but rather a private placement to buy back the company itself. Meta sources explained: “The shares were not sold by Javier Oliván, those shares were simply retained by Meta to cover, similar to what we do for all RSU liquidations.”
In recent years, it has acted as a ‘business angel’ for Spanish startups or with Spanish DNA as the seller aggregator for Amazon Yaba; the Goin youth savings app; the online survey and forms platform Typeform, or the ‘fintech’ for purchase returns
The Aragonese executive has been the faithful advisor of Mark Zuckerberg in recent years, away from the big lights, with a not very aggressive management style, a flat but direct attitude and a decisionless loyalty towards the CEO. He is one of the Praetorian Guard of executives to whom the CEO listened carefully, along with Chris Cox, Naomi Gleit and Adam Mosseri. He landed in the company to take charge of international expansion. Later he was climbing positions, focusing on the growth of the various platforms. In the middle of last year he was named ‘number 2’ after the departure of Sheryl Sandberg.
