[zzapplezz]

Also consider the difference in voting rights. Voting rights at berkshire require one to literally be rich. Funny that SNAP got shunned by S&P and literally was the genesis for a new rule [1] for excluding new stocks with split share classes yet BRK, GOOG, FB, CMCS, NWS, etc. can still exist in the index. Heck, companies like F & BF have separate voting shares to give families voting rights.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/01/snapchat-excluded-from-sp-50...

[fotta]

My understanding from that article is that SNAP's public shares are entirely non-voting whereas all the other companies' shares have (diluted) voting rights so I don't think it's quite the same even though in practice it pretty much is.

[zzapplezz]

Thank you for pointing this out, I thought BRK.B had no voting rights. I looked it up and learned that BRK.A shares have 6.66 the voting power of the equivalent dollar amount of BRK.B shares. Specifically, each BRK.A share is 1,500x the economic value of BRK.B but 10,000x the voting power. [1]

It turns out that there are indeed share classes of these companies with no voting rights (GOOG, class C) but I haven't found an example of a company that doesn't have some voting shares in non-insider hands.

It's still shitty that the S&P indices barred SNAP while turning a blind eye to the existing inequities. I'm perfectly okay with them barring new split share listings but at least begin to apply it to others that benefit from the lack of corporate governance.

[1] https://berkshirehathaway.com/compab.pdf#:~:text=Berkshire%2....