The board can sack the CEO, usually with a simple majority vote. That's just how boards work.

What's not normal is any kind of special investor right to sack the CEO unilaterally.

You're all arguing as if TFA was about the board overpowering the CEO, whereas if you read (even) the title, the reality is that they couldn't do anything, zilch.

We're talking about the question that spawned this thread:

> what is even the purpose of a board in a multi-class share structure with the founder holding above 50% voting shares.

This is a question about governance in general. The details of what happened at Automattic are irrelevant.