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Business Dual-class share structures The cost of control
商业 双重股份制结构 控制的代价
The trouble with non-voting shares
无选举股份的麻烦
SHAREHOLDERS in News Corporation have only themselves to blame. When they entrusted Rupert Murdoch with their money, they knew he would not let them tell him what to do with it. The Murdoch family owns about 12% of the company but controls almost 40% of the votes, through a special class of shares which have superior voting rights. Such "dual-class" share structures are quite common, especially at media firms. (The Economist Group has a version.) They can shield managers from stockmarket short-termism and hostile takeovers. But they cause problems, too.
新闻出版公司的股东只能为他们的行为买单。当将自己的钱委托给鲁伯特·默多克时，他们知道他不会让他们告诉他该怎样处理这些钱。默多克家族拥有公司12%的股份，却控制着40%的股权，这更高的表决权就是通过一种特殊的股份标准实现的。这种"双重标准"股份制结构相当常见，特别是在传媒公司中。（经济学人合作团队就是个例子）。他们可以使经理人免受由股票市场短期损益和敌对的收购带来的损失。
Two studies of American firms by Paul Gompers, Joy Ishii and Andrew Metrick, covering the years from 1994 to 2002, found that dual-class firms perform worse than comparable firms where all shares confer equal voting rights.
两项由Paul Gompers,Joy Ishii 和Andrew Metrick三人进行的对美国公司的研究包括了1994年到2002年的内容，发现当所有股东商谈平等投票表决权时，实行双重标准的公司表现的比同类公司差劲。
Dual-class firms are fonder of debt than equity, to prevent the dilution of controlling stakes. Yet surprisingly, their shares do not trade at a big discount on stockmarkets. A study by Chad Zutter and Scott Smart found that dual-class initial public offerings (IPOs) achieved only slightly lower price-earnings and price-sales ratios than comparable single-class IPOs。
实行双重标准的公司更倾向于运用债务而不是资本金来降低控制风险。然而令人吃惊的是，他们的股份不会在股票市场上以很大的折扣进行交易。一项由Chad Zutter和Scott Smart主持的研究发现，双重标准IPO达到的跟同类单标准IPO公司相比只是轻微地降低了市盈率。
Nor does this strange ownership model show any sign of going out of fashion. There were 12 dual-class IPOs in America last year, not far from the norm for the nine-year period in the 1990s studied by Mr Zutter and Mr Smart.
但这种奇怪的所有权例子也没有任何过时的迹象。美国去年有12家进行双重标准IPO的公司，这与Zutter和Smart先生研究的20世纪90年代中实行的标准相差无几。
Dual-class structures are not just a way for press barons to keep their hands on the hatchet with which they threaten governments. Internet firms love them, too, since they allow founders brimming with self-belief to raise cash without surrendering control. Google's IPO in 2004 involved two classes of share. LinkedIn followed suit this year. The IPO filings of Zynga and Groupon would also grant managers control over voting rights.
双重标准结构并不只是一种让出版业大王高举斧头威胁政府的一种方法。因特网公司业很喜欢他们，因为他们允许创办人满怀自信地筹集资金而不听从别人的摆布。谷歌在2004年进行的IPO就实行了这种双标股份制。在接下来的几年里都是这样的。IPO档案管理者的Zynga和Groupon也会准予经理人对投票表决权进行控制。
Investors who seek long-term gains may be happy to cede control if they think the boss is a genius. It worked for the holders of B shares in Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway. It once worked for investors in Mr Murdoch, too. But tech punters have not been so lucky. The number of dual-class firms listed in America fell from 482 in 2000 to 362 in 2002 as the dotcom bubble burst. If the current internet boom follows a similar path, News Corporation shareholders will not be the only ones feeling second-class.
找到长期获利的投资者也许会很高兴地把操纵权转让，如果他们认为老板是个天才的话。他曾经在华伦巴菲特的Berkshire Hathaway中为B股股东工作。他也曾经在默多克为投资者服务。但技术投资者就不会这么幸运了。双重编制公司在美国的数量由于受到网络公司泡沫破裂的影响已从2000年的482家减少到2002年的362家。如果现今的因特网向同样地方向发展，新闻公司股东将不会是唯一感受到不被重视的人。
