Are multiple classes of shares really that bad? Here in Germany a possible concept is the Vorzugsaktie (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferred_stock#Germany) where you have no voting rights in exchange for a higher dividend than the normal stocks. If you're just a small investor with no desire to exercise voting rights anyway it's actually the better deal.
That sounds fine. I think the problem is with the relatively recent trend of not paying out any dividends at all. If you have no voting rights to change that, there isn't really any value inherent in the shares other than the trust you and everyone else places in the company. It especially throws a wrench in the notion that the value of a security is the net present value of all future cash flows.
It's similar to when the US government stopped allowing trades of bills for silver. In both cases, you stop being able to get "real money" from the financial instrument and have to just trust that the rest of the world will treat the financial instrument as real money.
Similar but not the same. You are obligated by law to accept US dollar bills (any denomination) for the satisfaction of debt. Whereas you're not obligated to do so in the case of these non-voting shares. In a certain sense, by buying these shares, you are assuming there will exist other people who want them too (a market) whereas US securities guarantee a market (300 mil + US citizens).
It is true that the US guarantees liquidity for US dollar bills, but liquidity is hardly an issue for a public stock large enough to be listed on the S&P 500...
You are correct of course. My intention was to point out that this is a great step so that the S&P 500 remains that way. That you don't let in companies offering such shares in the same index (and thus market) as ones that don't.
Of course the ones that are already listed can continue to do so. But still a good step in the right direction IMO.
> If you have no voting rights to change that, there isn't really any value inherent in the shares other than the trust you and everyone else places in the company.
No, dividends are only one way that value can be returned to investors. There are at least two more: buybacks and acquisitions.
Without voting rights, there is no financial anchor for the price since you cannot liquidate the company either, so yeah, it's not really a stock. It is a scrip backed by the faith in the existing majority voting bloc.
These shares are often structured such that the enhanced voting rights expire when the original holder sells the stock though. So the classes aren't equally available to the market.
US also has "preferred" stocks which generally pays dividends but don't come with voting rights. These are typically issued by financial companies in US.
Issue in this article and with SNAP is multiple classes of "common" stocks that come with and without voting.
