Companies with a dual-class structure have increasingly been involved in high-profile battles over the reallocation of control rights. Google, for instance, sought to entrench its founders’ control over the corporation by recapitalizing from a...Read more
In this paper we show that dual-class shares can be an answer to agency conflicts rather than a result of agency conflicts. When a firm issues voting shares to raise funds, an incumbent manager?s control rights are diluted. This increases the...Read more
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 one-share-one-vote and dual...Read more
Dual-class voting systems have been widely employed in recent initial public offerings by large tech companies, but have been roundly condemned by institutional investors and the S&P 500. As an alternative, commentators have proposed adoption...Read more
We examine an extensive matched sample of U.S. dual and single class firms in 1980-2015 from the time of their IPO, and document that the valuation difference between dual and single class firms varies over their life cycle. On average, around...Read more
The contractual theory of the firm predicts that companies adopt charters that maximise firm value, regardless of the default rule. We test this proposition empirically around a major legal reform. French companies going public used to give...Read more
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 controllers...Read more
Using a new dataset of corporate voting-rights from 1971 to 2015, we find that young dual-class firms trade at a premium and operate at least as efficiently as young single-class firms. As dualclass firms mature, their valuation declines, and...Read more
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 to firms...Read more
