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Some media companies had them before the 1980s. New York Times issued dual class in 1969 so that the owning family maintained editorial control.

Berkshire Hathaway is possibly the most famous from the 80s/90s. The class A shares are significantly more expensive and proportionately even more powerful than the class B shares. The lower price version was important back when physical exchanges didn’t support fractional shares as they do today.



Berkshires share classes are different in that A is exactly ten B shares and anyone can convert A to B and hold them. The dual share classes that are bad separate control from ownership.


The BRK A and B are slightly different in that A is worth 1500 B but B only has 1/10000 of a vote so it IS a somewhat lopsided value vs voting share but not as bad as the 0 vote SPCX shares that just got dumped on the market.


Your ratios are way off. Price ratio is 1:1500 for A to B, while voting power ration is 1:10000. Each A share is 6.67x more powerful than 1500 x B shares.



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