Tuesday, April 25, 2017

"The Untenable Case for Perpetual Dual-Class Stock"

From The Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation:
Editor's note
 Lucian Bebchuk is the James Barr Ames Professor of Law, Economics, and Finance, and Director of the Program on Corporate Governance, at Harvard Law School. Kobi Kastiel is the Research Director of the Project on Controlling Shareholders of the Program. This post is based on their Article, The Untenable Case for Perpetual Dual-Class Stock, forthcoming in the Virginia Law Review. The Article is part of the research undertaken by the Project on Controlling Shareholders.
We recently placed on SSRN our study, The Untenable Case for Perpetual Dual-Class Stock. The study, which will be published by the Virginia Law Review in June 2017, analyzes the substantial costs and governance risks posed by companies that go public with a long-term dual-class structure.
The long-standing debate on dual-class structure has focused on whether dual-class stock is an efficient capital structure that should be permitted at the time of initial public offering (“IPO”). By contrast, we focus on how the passage of time since the IPO can be expected to affect the efficiency of such a structure.

Our analysis demonstrates that the potential advantages of dual-class structures (such as those resulting from founders’ superior leadership skills) tend to recede, and the potential costs tend to rise, as time passes from the IPO. Furthermore, we show that controllers have perverse incentives to retain dual-class structures even when those structures become inefficient over time. Accordingly, even those who believe that dual-class structures are in many cases efficient at the time of the IPO should recognize the substantial risk that their efficiency may decline and disappear over time. Going forward, the debate should focus on the permissibility of finite-term dual-class structures—that is, structures that sunset after a fixed period of time (such as ten or fifteen years) unless their extension is approved by shareholders unaffiliated with the controller.

We provide a framework for designing dual-class sunsets and address potential objections to their use. We also discuss the significant implications of our analysis for public officials, institutional investors, and researchers.

Below is a more detailed summary of our analysis:

1990, Viacom Inc., a prominent media company, adopted a dual-class capital structure, consisting of two classes of shares with differential voting rights. This structure enabled Viacom’s controlling shareholder, Sumner Redstone, to maintain full control over the company while holding only a small fraction of its equity capital. At the time, Redstone was already one of the most powerful and successful figures in Hollywood. Indeed, three years earlier, he had bought Viacom in a hostile takeover, exhibiting the kind of savvy and daring business maneuvers that subsequently helped him transform Viacom into a $40 billion entertainment empire that encompasses the Paramount movie studio and the CBS, MTV, and Showtime television networks. Investors during the 1990s could have reasonably been expected to be content with having Redstone safely at the helm.

Fast-forward twenty-six years to 2016: Ninety-three-year-old Redstone faced a lawsuit, brought by Viacom’s former CEO and a long-time company director, alleging that Redstone suffered from “profound physical and mental illness”; “has not been seen publicly for nearly a year[;] can no longer stand, walk, read, write or speak coherently; … cannot swallow[;] and requires a feeding tube to eat and drink.” Indeed, in a deposition, Redstone did not respond when asked his original family birth name. Some observers expressed concerns that “the company has been operating in limbo since the controversy erupted.” However, public investors, who own approximately ninety percent of Viacom’s equity capital, remained powerless and without influence over the company or the battle for its control.

Eventually, in August 2016, the parties reached a settlement agreement that ended their messy legal battles, providing Viacom’s former CEO with significant private benefits and leaving control in the hands of Redstone. Notably, despite the allegation and the evidence that surfaced, the settlement prevented a court ruling on whether Redstone was legally competent. Note that even a finding of legal competency would have hardly reassured public investors: Legal competence does not by itself qualify a person to make key decisions for a major company. Moreover, once Redstone passes away or is declared to be legally incompetent, legal arrangements in place would require the control stake to remain for decades in an irrevocable trust that would be managed by a group of trustees, most of whom have no proven business experience in leading large public companies. Thus, even assuming that Viacom’s governance structure was fully acceptable to public investors two decades ago, this structure has clearly become highly problematic for them.

Let us now turn from Viacom to Snap Inc. The company responsible for the popular disappearing-message application Snapchat has recently gone public with a multiple-class structure that would enable the company’s co-founders, Evan Spiegel and Robert Murphy, to have lifetime control over Snap. Given that they are now only twenty-six and twenty-eight years old, respectively, the co-founders can be expected to remain in control for a period that may last fifty or more years.

Public investors may be content with having Spiegel and Murphy securely at the helm in the years following Snap’s initial public offering. After all, Spiegel and Murphy might be viewed by investors as responsible for the creation and success of a company that went public at a valuation of nearly $24 billion. However, even if the Snap co-founders have unique talents and vision that make them by far the best individuals to lead the company in 2017 and the subsequent several years, it is hardly certain that they would continue to be fitting leaders down the road. The tech environment is highly dynamic, with disruptive innovations and a quick pace of change, and once-successful founders could well lose their golden touch after many years of leading their companies. Thus, an individual who is an excellent leader in 2017 might become an ill-fitting or even disastrous choice for making key decisions in 2037, 2047, or 2057. Accordingly, as the time since Snap’s IPO grows, so does the risk that Snap’s capital structure, and the co-founders’ resulting lock on control, will generate costly governance problems....MUCH MORE