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More Than Meets the Eye: Reassessing the Empirical Evidence on US Dual-Class Stock

Accepted version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

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Abstract

Some of the largest and most successful publicly traded companies, such as Alphabet and Facebook, have implemented a capital structure known as dual-class stock. Dual-class stock enables a company’s controller to retain voting control of a corporation while holding a disproportionately lower level of the corporation’s cash- flow rights. Dual-class stock has led a tortured life in the US, and is perhaps the most controversial area of corporate governance today. Between institutional investor derision and the exclusion or restriction of dual- class stock from certain indices, one may assume that dual-class structure must be harmful to outside stockholders. However, in this article, the existing empirical evidence on US dual-class stock will be reassessed by contrasting studies that use different measures of performance. It will be shown that although dual-class firms are generally valued less than similar one-share, one-vote firms, they perform as well as, and, in many cases, outperform, such firms from the perspective of operating performance and stock returns. When it comes to dual-class stock, more than meets the eye, and a presumption that dual-class stock is harmful for outside stockholders should not guide policy formulation.

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Keywords

Journal Title

Journal of Business Law

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

0021-9460

Volume Title

Publisher

Sweet and Maxwell

Publisher DOI

Sponsorship
Cambridge Endowment for Research in Finance