Mark Zuckerberg has rejected calls for him to step down as the chair of Facebook’s board.

In an interview with CNN, Mr Zuckerberg said ”that’s not the plan... I’m not currently thinking that that makes sense.”

His comments follow growing calls from investors for Facebook to appoint an independent board chair.

Jonas Kron, a senior vice president at Trillium Asset Management, a US investor which owns an £8.5m stake in Facebook, said Zuckerberg to relinquish his chairman role.

“Facebook is behaving like it's a special snowflake,” he said. “It's not. It is a company and companies need to have a separation of chair and CEO.”

Investors believe that Zuckerberg’s control of Facebook stops the business being able to properly address its problems.

As well as serving as chief executive and chairman, the Facebook founder also controls around 60pc of the company’s voting shares.

Zuckerberg’s control is “an exercise in hiding that there is a problem rather than admitting that there is a problem and setting a roadmap to fixing it,” said Facebook investor Natasha Lamb, a managing partner at Arjuna Capital.

A recent New York Times report exposed Facebook’s use of public relations firm Definers which conducted opposition research on the social network’s critics. Much of the blame over the issue had been directed towards Facebook’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg.