The biggest companies in Silicon Valley are diverging from their peers elsewhere on certain measures of corporate governance, according to a recent study.
Posted on Bloomberg Big Law Business
By Andrea Vittorio
The nation’s largest public companies have moved away from staggered boards, where directors are elected a few at a time rather than all at once. But firms from the valley are holding on to this takeover defense, the study found.
“Silicon Valley is a big outlier in that regard,” the study’s author David Bell, a Silicon Valley-based partner at law firm Fenwick & West LLP who advises companies on governance issues, told Bloomberg Law.
Companies such as Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google are likewise moving in the opposite direction of others like Wal-Mart Stores Inc. on another tool designed to help maintain corporate control after going public: dual-class shares. This kind of stock grants super voting rights to founders and management while giving fewer votes to regular investors.
The study, released Dec. 13, compared Silicon Valley’s 150 largest technology and life sciences companies by revenue to companies that are part of the S&P 100 index from 2004 to today.
Read complete article Silicon Valley’s Biggest Firms Buck Corporate Governance Trends | Andrea Vittorio | Big Law Business