Previous research initiated by Claessens et al. (2002) has established a value discount of disproportional ownership structures. Due to omitted variables problems it is difficult to provide a causal interpretation of these...
Firms can issue stocks classified in many ways. They can be classified in respect to voting rights, dividend rights, redemption rights, conversion rights, and many others. In this study, we ask if it is desirable to give greater freedom...
In the U.K., between 1955 and 1970, dual class shares quickly lost popularity without any regulatory intervention. The decline in the use of dual class shares was positively correlated with the relative valuations of...
The conventional view of corporate governance is that it is a neutral set of processes and practices that govern how a company is managed. We demonstrate that this view is profoundly mistaken: in the United...
Most American publicly held corporations have a one-share, one-vote structure, in which voting power is proportional to economic ownership. This gives shareholders economic incentives to exercise their voting power well and helps...
This Article contributes to the long-standing and heated debate over dual-class companies by placing a spotlight on a significant set of dual-class companies whose structures raise especially severe governance concerns: those with...
Although securities regulation is distinct from corporate governance, the two fields have considerable substantive overlap. By increasing the transparency and efficiency of the capital markets, securities regulation...
We examine U.S. dual and single class firms in 1980-2017, and document that the valuation difference between dual and single class firms varies over their life cycle. At the IPO, dual class firms have higher mean valuations than...
Companies with a dual-class structure have increasingly been involved in highprofile battles over the reallocation of control rights. Google, for instance, sought to entrench its founders’ control by recapitalizing from a...
