Min Yan

The Myth of Dual Class Shares: Lessons from Asia

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Companies with dual class shares have, as the term suggests, two (or more) classes of common stock. One class gives its holders voting power proportionate to their equity shareholdings. The other offers a group of shareholders, normally corporate insiders, weighted voting rights, which allow the insiders to retain control with less than majority ownership of the company.

The recent wave of high-profile technology giants, from Google to Facebook, that have gone public with dual class shares in the U.S. has led to the revival of the use of such share structures. Dual class shares have also gained traction among policymakers … Read more

Lessons from the Evolution of Corporations and Shareholder Rights in China

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Although China seems to have taken far longer than Western developed nations such as the UK, the U.S., and Germany to create a modern corporate system, the imperial Qing government promulgated as early as 1904 a corporate law that included rules on limited liability and equal treatment of shares. Why then did it take another century for a mature corporate law and governance system to emerge?

Throughout 150 years of corporate evolution in China, the government has to varying degrees played an active and dominant role. It exercised complete control at the start of the late Qing Dynasty (1860-1911) but … Read more