I read through Facebook's S-1, the voluminous document that it filed yesterday in preparation for its initial public offering.  Erskine Bowles, former White House chief of staff and former UNC system president, is on Facebook's board.  According to the S-1, Bowles is chairman of  Facebook's audit committee, which is the group responsible for making sure all the company's numbers are on the up and up. This is a particularly important role for new companies that are trying to convince the investing community that its revenues and profits are real, as opposed to Enron-like.

For his service on the board, Bowles has received 20,000 "restricted stock units," or RSUs. Facebook estimates the value of those at around $600,000. But he has to stay on the board for several years before they completely vest. Frankly, that's chump change to Bowles. Being on the board of the world's hottest company is probably something he'd do for nothing.

And frankly, a couple of guys on the board who you might recognize have much sweeter deals, such as Mark Andreessen, who has 5.2 million RSUs, and Don Graham, who has a million RSUs. Andreessen, who also has a bunch of Class B stock, according to the S-1, is the fellow who helped make Netscape the dominant internet browser in the early '90s. And Graham is the chairman of the board of the Washington Post.

Of course RSUs only pay off if Facebook continues to prosper. Andreessen knows from watching Microsoft's Explorer overtake Netscape 15 years ago how an Internet business can get demolished by a competitor with deep pockets.

The question I have is whether Erskine would rather spend the second half of his 60s hanging out with Mark Zuckerberg or being governor of North Carolina.

UPDATE: A reader also reminded me that Bowles is on the board of Morgan Stanley, the investment bank that is the lead underwriter on the IPO. The S-1 notes that Bowles began his career in corporate finance at Morgan Stanley. It is such a small world.

UPDATE #2: Question answered. Bowles just announced he's not running.

Former White House Chief of Staff and former UNC president Erskine Bowles will speak tonight in Duke's Page Auditorium along with U.S. Senator Alan Simpson (Wyoming) on their ideas for reigning in the federal budget. The discussion will air tomorrow night and Friday night on UNC-TV.

Bowles and Simpson are co-chairs of the bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, a budget commission started by President Obama in Februrary 2010.

The event at Duke, "Decision Time: Bowles, Simpson and the Federal Budget," is part of the Sanford School's Terry Sanford Distinguished Lecture series, which brings notable speakers to Duke's campus. UNC-TV will record the event in its entirety and then air it as two "North Carolina Now" programs at 7:30 p.m. on January 19 and 20.

Philip Bennett, a Duke public policy professor and managing edior of the PBS series "Frontline," will moderate the discussion.

Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, who co-chaired the bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, are coming to Duke University.

They will speak at 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 18, in Page Auditorium.

Erskine Bowles "likes" Facebook.

The former president of the UNC system has joined the social network giant's board of directors, adding to his long history of corporate board work.

Facebook has been beefing up its board as the company is widely reported to be preparing for an IPO next year. Other board members include Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Washington Post CEO Donald Graham and Netflix CEO Reed Hastings.

"Erskine has held important roles in government, academia and business which have given him insight into how to build organizations and navigate complex issues,” Zuckerberg said in a prepared statement.

Erskine Bowles is beefing up his lengthy board of directors resume with a stint at Belk.

Bowles, who retired as president of the UNC system in January, was elected to the board of the Charlotte-based department store chain at its annual meeting today.

Bowles is also on the boards of Morgan Stanley, Cousins Properties and Norfolk Southern. The Greensboro native previously served on the boards of General Motors, N.C. Mutual, Merck, VF Corp., Wachovia and Krispy Kreme.

"His extensive service as a director of public companies provides him with a valuable depth of experience on a wide range of corporate governance issues," CEO Tim Belk said in a prepared statement.

In today's paper, the full story on new UNC President Tom Ross's desire to seek out duplication within the UNC system.

This should be an interesting process. On individual campuses, faculties aren'g generally programmed to think first about working collaboratively with their counterparts at other public institutions. It happens, but it isn't as high a priority as it's going to become.

Ross's first big venture will seek out what he calls "unnecessary duplication" among academic programs, an endeavor sure to result in some hurt feelings and turf wars.

Here's the story.

Under Erskine Bowles, the UNC system focused largely on making the administrative side of the university more efficient.

Now, new president Tom Ross wants to attack the academic side.

Ross announced his desire Friday morning to look for ways to streamline the university's academics by looking for "unnecessary duplication."

It is important, Ross told members of the UNC system's Board of Governors, for the university to be "nimble and flexible" as it works through what is expected to be a difficult budget year.

He has tapped James Woodward, the longtime former chancellor at UNC Charlotte, to head this initiative.

(Woodward also served as interim chancellor at N.C. State University)

Stay tuned for more.
 

Erskine Bowles was a couple years into his tenure as UNC's president when a real head-scratcher landed on his desk.

N.C. Central University, the historically black institution in Durham, had been improperly operating a satellite campus for for years at a church near Atlanta.

The plot thickened: The church was operated by Eddie Long, then a NCCU trustee.

Hmm...

The university's discovery of this satellite campus created a mess for Bowles and Charlie Nelms, then still new in his post as NCCU's chancellor.

Nelms had recently taken over for James Ammons, who had left Durham for the presidency at Florida A & M University.

The unauthorized satellite campus at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia, Ga. had been created while Ammons was chancellor.

So in interviewing Bowles recently just weeks prior to his retirement as UNC president, I asked him if he had ever gotten to the bottom of that mess.
 

Erskine Bowles never hid the fact that he was an outsider when he took on the UNC system's top job. He always acknowledged that his was a boardroom mentality.

And five years later, he still freely admits he saw things differently than academics do when he became the UNC president.

As he put it in this story that ran over the weekend:

"I come from a world of ready, fire, aim, and I came to a world of ready, aim, aim, aim, aim. In almost any organization you need to meet the demands of the customers. Universities are almost the opposite. They spent their whole careers doing what they durn well want to. I tried to think about how to meet the demands of North Carolina and its citizens. You can't operate it like a business, but you can operate it in a more businesslike manner."

To hear that, you'd think he wouldn't curry much favor with faculty members, who might take his comments as an insult.

But Sandie Gravett, an Appalachian State University professor who now chairs the UNC system's faculty assembly, said Bowles won their respect by listening. And she points to the UNC Tomorrow initiative as his crowning achievement, a project that made more clear what public higher education really should be doing.

She said in part:

President Bowles never tried to be something he is not with the faculty.  If I heard him say it once, I heard him say a million times that he was not an academic.  And, without a doubt, much of our world seemed puzzling to him given that university campuses do not function like corporations.  He was, however, open to hearing from us, learning about us, and partnering with us.  He spent many hours in give and take with the faculty, took notes, and followed up as necessary.

Sen. Phil Berger, who will be elected President Pro Tem of the state Senate when the legislature convenes Jan. 26, has been added to the line up of Monday's Economic Forecast Forum at the Sheraton Imperial and Convention Center in the Research Triangle Park.  

Berger will share his perspective on the economy and quite probably discuss what the state's new Republican-controlled legislature plans to do about the state's $3.7 billion budget shortfall.

The annual event is coordinated by the North Carolina Bankers Association and the North Carolina Chamber. About 1,100 business leaders from across the state are expected to attend.
 
Other speakers include Erskine Bowles, outgoing president of the University of North Carolina system and co-chair of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility, and Mark Vitner, senior economist of Wells Fargo Securities.

U.S. Sen. Richard Burr was scheduled but ran into a scheduling conflict and had to bow out.

Registration information can be found here.  For more information about the Economic Forecast Forum, contact Christy Santacana at the NC Bankers Association at christy@ncbankers.org or 1-800-662-7044.