Not All Shareholders Are Created Equal

One share, one vote, right? Not necessarily. With certain voting structures some shareholders will be more equal than others.

- Simon Brown

one of the core tenets of being a shareholder is that at a company’s annual general meeting (AGM), every shareholder is equal. You get one vote for every share you hold. So yes, the larger shareholders get more votes, but that’s because they have a larger economic interest and their voting is directly linked to this interest via the number of shares they hold.

However, this is not always the case. Via one of two different structures, some shareholders will be more equal than others.

The first is via the holding company structure that Pick n Pay used to have. In this example, Pick n Pay was held by the listed Pick n Pay Group. But then another separate entity, Pick n Pay Holdings, owned just over 50% of Pick n Pay Group.