SpaceX IPO Shows How Investors in Public Companies Are Losing Power

One share, one vote.It’s a longstanding principle of investing in a publicly traded company that means that the number of shares an investor owns is equal to the number of votes he or she can cast on critical issues like mergers and acquisitions, board appointments and executive pay.SpaceX’s entry in the stock market is the latest challenge to this principle, swelling the ranks of large and influential public companies that give shareholders little say in how they are run.This month, SpaceX listed its shares on the Nasdaq with two tiers of stock: A-class shares, which are available to the public and carry one vote at the company’s annual general meeting; and B-class shares, which carry 10 times the voting power and are held by its founder and chief executive, Elon Musk, and a small group of insiders.The arrangement means that even after Mr.Musk’s company sold more than $85 billion in shares in its record-setting initial public offering, he still maintains control.It echoes similar moves by other founder-led technology behemoths like Alphabet, which went public in 2004, when the company was known as Google, and Meta, which went public in 2012 when it was called Facebook.Mr.

Musk owns about 40 percent of SpaceX shares but controls over 80 percent of the votes.Mark Zuckerberg, who founded Meta, owns about 13 percent of Meta shares but controls about 60 percent of votes.

And Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google, together own about 10 percent of Alphabet but control more than 50 percent of votes.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe....