Friday, May 26, 2017

Snap and the Rise of No-Vote Common Shares

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Posted by Ken Bertsch, Council of Institutional Investors, on Friday, May 26, 2017

Editor’s Note: Ken Bertsch is Executive Director at the Council of Institutional Investors. This post is based on Mr. Bertsch’s recent remarks to the SEC Investor Advisory Committee. Related research from the Program on Corporate Governance includes The Untenable Case for Perpetual Dual-Class Stock by Lucian Bebchuk and Kobi Kastiel (discussed on the Forum here).

Snap Inc.’s IPO [on March 2, 2017], featuring public shares with no voting rights, appears to be the first no-vote listing at IPO on a U.S. exchange since the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in 1940 generally barred multi-class common stock structures with differential voting rights.

Members of the Council of Institutional Investors have watched with rising alarm for the last 30 years as global stock exchanges have engaged in a listing standards race to the bottom. With NYSE-listed Snap’s arrival with “zero” rights for public shareholders, perhaps the bottom has been reached.

(more…)

May 26, 2017 at 06:47PM

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