Dual class shares: when your vote is worth less

One class carries one vote, another carries ten or more. The founders hold the powerful class; the public buys the weak one. Economically the shares are usually identical: same dividend, same claim on profits.

It lets a founder ignore short-term market pressure and build for a decade. Several of the great compounders of the last twenty years were built exactly this way, and would not have been if they had been forced to answer quarterly.

If management turns out to be self-serving or incompetent, you have no mechanism to remove them. The market's usual discipline, a takeover or a shareholder revolt, is structurally impossible.

Governance is not a footnote, it is a risk. A company where minorities have no recourse should trade at some discount, and you should be receiving it rather than paying a premium.