Last month, I did a blog on how Rupert Murdoch was facing a challenge from an Australian shareholder activist Stephen Mayne who had put a motion for News Corp to ditch its system of Class A and Class B shares.
According to Mayne, it effectively strips most News Corp shares of their voting rights and allows Murdoch to control the company with just a small proportion of the equity. Mayne's proposal, which will go to the News Corp meeting on October 19, seeks to replace the dual structure with one class of share.
I have now reported that global Proxy voting firm ISS has thrown its weight behind Mayne which might make the meeting very interesting.
The ISS report says "We do not approve of companies having different classes of common stock with disparate voting rights. This effectively gives one class of shareholders disproportionate voting power in the company in relation to its equity position. This can serve to entrench management if the board and executives own a large voting percentage based on their ownership of supervoting stock."
no comment untill now