Shopify Inc. co-founder, chair and chief executive Tobias Lutke has three young children. The billionaire is willing to give up the opportunity to pass along the company to his offspring in exchange for maintaining control for as long he works at the online commerce giant. Ottawa-based Shopify, Canada’s largest tech company, announced on Monday it plans […]

n will set this week on the special voting rights held by the four founders of Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc., leaving the Canadian convenience store giant more exposed to investor pressure than ever before. Its fate will be closely watched by both critics and defenders of dual class share structures. Laval, Que.-based Couche-Tard is one of […]

A recent boardroom clash at Rogers Communications Inc. has revealed the governance risk associated with dual-class share companies, but experts say businesses with that structure can be hard to avoid for investors because they’re big profit generators. Companies with dual-class shares issue different sets of common shares that have different voting and control rights. This […]

Canadian investor organizations want stricter requirements for companies with dual-class stocks to trade on public exchanges amid a growing debate about the drawbacks of such shares and a controversy over voting rights at Rogers Communications Inc. Dual-class stock structuring – where different classes of shares in a single company have different voting rights – has […]

Since the publication in 1932 of Berle and Means’ The Modern Corporation and Private Property, “capitalist” societies have been engaged in a forlorn quest for an appropriate definition of the role, justification and “raison d’être” of large corporations. Except for the legal fiction of shareholders as owners, corporations of the 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s, were […]

You have missed our virtual event on ” The Purpose of a Corporation and the Stakeholder Model ” with the renowned lawyer from New York,  Martin Lipton, founding partner of the prominent law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz  ? With the attendance of more than 300 participants, this conference, organised in partnership with ICD, tackled multiple governance […]

Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc. will let the sun set on the special voting rights held by its four founders. Executive chairman Alain Bouchard says that he and the three other men who built the Canadian convenience-store empire will let their 25-year-old special stock rights, which give them control over the company, expire next year as scheduled […]

For 40 years or so, corporations listed on stock markets were expected to pursue diligently, if not exclusively, value creation for their shareholders. A number of factors had pushed corporations away from an earlier “stakeholder model,” prime among them the revolution in executive compensation. Then, in the new century, a perennial criticism of business corporations […]

Canada’s securities regulators are launching a review of automatic share sale programs after controversial trading last year at Bombardier Inc. led to calls for reform by investor rights advocates. The Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA), an umbrella organization for provincial securities watchdogs, said on Thursday it will examine whether automatic securities disposition plans place “appropriate constraints” […]

In September 2019, CEOs of large U.S. corporations have embraced with suspect enthusiasm the notion that a corporation’s purpose is broader than merely “creating shareholder value”. Why now after 30 years of obedience to the dogma of shareholder primacy and servile (but highly paid) attendance to the whims and wants of investment funds? Simply put, […]

The fate of Air Canada’s $720-million takeover bid for Transat A.T. Inc. rests with regulators after shareholders overwhelmingly approved the acquisition offer Friday. In a special meeting, shareholders of the Quebec-based tour operator voted 94.77 per cent in favour of accepting the $18-per-share transaction from the country’s largest airline. The deal will narrow the field […]

Mergers and acquisitions are well-choreographed ballets. Both companies call on financial and legal advisers. The board of the target company sets up an independent committee, which promptly retains its own independent legal and financial advisers. Financial advisers produce an opinion letter assuring all and sundry that the price offered is a fair one for the […]

Investor-rights group Médac acknowledges its bid to end Bombardier Inc.’s dual-class share system is destined to fail, but says it has no better option to trigger a discussion on what it sees as a critical issue. The Montreal-based organization is calling for changes to the laws governing Canadian companies that give extra voting rights to […]

Allaire, Yvan, The Case for Dual-Class of Shares (December 20, 2018). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3318447 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3318447 The debate over whether dual class of shares increases or decreases share value, should be prohibited or not, should be subjected to mandatory sunset provisions, and so on has been heating up over the last few years. This paper reviews the […]

Dual-class share structures have drawn the ire of some investors, citing concerns with shareholder rights. For more on this and why he thinks there’s a place for dual-class shares, BNN Bloomberg spoke with Yvan Allaire, executive chair at the Institute for Governance of Private and Public Organizations. To view the interview, please click here

Montreal (February 4, 2019) — In Canada, the number of companies with multiple voting shares has dropped from 100 in 2005 to 69 in 2018. But these companies continue to play a vital role in the Canadian economy. The Institute for Governance has issued a policy paper in support of multiple voting shares, urging entrepreneurs […]