Boom: Bubbles and the End of Stagnation
by Byrne Hobart and Tobias Huber · 29 Oct 2024 · 292pp · 106,826 words
so executives won’t be beholden to outside shareholders. Many big tech companies including Meta, Google parent Alphabet, Snap, Shopify, Lyft, Pinterest, and Zoom use dual-class stock, which grants founders disproportionate voting power. This makes it hard for investors to fire a bad CEO, but it also makes it difficult for them
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gas industry is gradually changing this dynamic. 271 Mitchell’s word carried weight because, in an unusual arrangement for an energy company, Mitchell Energy had dual-class stock. George Mitchell couldn’t be voted out, even if most shareholders didn’t like his management style. This dual-class share structure allowed Mitchell to
Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell
by Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg and Alan Eagle · 15 Apr 2019 · 199pp · 56,243 words
Larry and Sergey, the structure was a critical element of their vision for the company. They admired Warren Buffett and had become knowledgeable about the dual class stock structure that his company Berkshire Hathaway employed. They had always considered Google as much an institution as a business. They fervently believed in thinking long
Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire
by Brad Stone · 10 May 2021 · 569pp · 156,139 words
asking whether they would support the creation of a second class of Amazon stock that carried a lower share price and reduced voting rights. Such dual-class stock structures, employed at Facebook and Google’s parent company, Alphabet, can end up concentrating voting power with their founders, giving them ultimate sway over matters
The Innovation Illusion: How So Little Is Created by So Many Working So Hard
by Fredrik Erixon and Bjorn Weigel · 3 Oct 2016 · 504pp · 126,835 words
between forms of ownership. One way to sever the link is to grant companies greater freedom to discriminate between owners by expanding the usage of dual class stock structures. Active ownership is prioritized by different rules for dividends and voting rights. With increasing size and numbers of owners, maintaining entrepreneurial leadership becomes increasingly
Power Play: Tesla, Elon Musk, and the Bet of the Century
by Tim Higgins · 2 Aug 2021 · 430pp · 135,418 words
advice of his lawyers. One thing Tesla elected not to do when preparing for public ownership, which would have ramifications years later, was introduce a dual-class stock system. This was what allowed Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Google (or Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook two years later) to keep control of their
Bill Marriott: Success Is Never Final--His Life and the Decisions That Built a Hotel Empire
by Dale van Atta · 14 Aug 2019 · 520pp · 164,834 words
shareholder vote, which became the only one Bill lost in his storied career. During the merger-mania decade of the 1980s, many companies adopted a dual-class stock position, which involved giving existing stockholders more votes with “super voting stock” so future corporate raiders buying one-vote stock shares could not prevail as
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with Sodexho and eventual buyout of the food services division. Then, at the May 20, 1998, annual shareholder meeting, they were asked to approve the dual-class stock proposal. Bill received an overwhelming majority of the shareholder votes cast in person or by proxy, but unfortunately that amounted to only 47 percent of
Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber
by Mike Isaac · 2 Sep 2019 · 444pp · 127,259 words
company, we won’t be doing terrible things for money.” In 2004, when Google undertook its IPO, it used a controversial financial instrument called a “dual-class stock structure.” Google sold “Class A” shares to the public, while its founders held onto “Class B” shares. The two classes held the same monetary value
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, Brin and Page agreed to go public only after meeting Warren Buffett, the legendary American business mogul, who introduced the two young founders to the dual-class stock structure. “We are creating a corporate structure that is designed for stability over long time horizons,” Page wrote in a letter cheekily titled “An Owner
Googled: The End of the World as We Know It
by Ken Auletta · 1 Jan 2009 · 532pp · 139,706 words
to about 3 percent. And to protect what they saw as Google’s “core values” and maintain a long-term focus, they would implement a dual class stock ownership. The class A shares sold to the public would receive one vote; the class B shares, retained by the founders and by Schmidt and
Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire
by Rebecca Henderson · 27 Apr 2020 · 330pp · 99,044 words
change. This is not just a Japanese issue. In the last fifteen years, many of the most successful Silicon Valley firms have gone public with dual class stock that has left founders in sole control of their firms. Facebook, for example, issued two classes of shares when it went public. The Class A
Concentrated Investing
by Allen C. Benello · 7 Dec 2016
super-voting stock, management has been free to ignore shareholders entirely. The Roberts family seemed unlikely to surrender control of the company by scrapping the dual-class stock. Chieftain’s only hope was that public embarrassment and Comcast’s poor stock performance might lead the family to start caring about its public shareholders
Secrets of Sand Hill Road: Venture Capital and How to Get It
by Scott Kupor · 3 Jun 2019 · 340pp · 100,151 words
The Meritocracy Trap: How America's Foundational Myth Feeds Inequality, Dismantles the Middle Class, and Devours the Elite
by Daniel Markovits · 14 Sep 2019 · 976pp · 235,576 words