All Articles Tagged "shareholders"
Minority Owners (Sometimes) Get Even
(The Network Journal) — It used to be that the minority owners of a corporation had no meaningful rights at all — they were at the mercy of the majority owners, who could treat them any way they wished and “freeze” them out of management. Back in the 1920s, somebody wrote a treatise for corporate lawyers on “The Oppression of Minority Shareholders” describing the many techniques for doing so — that book is still in print after 90 years and runs to several thousand pages. In an effort to give minority shareholders some rights, a growing number of states, particularly in the northeastern United States, have passed laws allowing the holders of a significant minority of shares (usually 10 percent to 20 percent of the total outstanding) to petition a court to dissolve the corporation if the majority owners engage in “harmful and oppressive conduct” toward the minority holders.
A New Page for Book Retailers? Shares Surge in Pre-Market Trading
(Smart Money) – Stocks in Asia closed mixed today, European shares are down, and U.S. futures are pointing to a lower open. The bookstore industry could be in for a major change. After Tuesday’s market close, Barnes & Noble (BKS: 12.84, -0.98, -7.09%), the country’s largest bookstore chain, announced that it was considering “strategic alternatives” for the company’s future, including a possible sale.
Shareholder Activists Set to Drill Oil Companies
(Businessweek) — It may seem unthinkable that a company with so formidable a public image and financial track record as BP (BP) is fighting to save its reputation—and potentially, its very existence—less than two years after the oil industry logged its biggest-ever growth in profits. Reversals of fortune of this magnitude aren’t as rare as we sometimes think. Recall how the tobacco giants wound up ceding enormous, profit-generating power to the U.S. government and how asbestos lawsuits forced such major industrial outfits as Johns-Manville into bankruptcy.
Do Inefficient Stock Markets Drive Bad Corporate Governance?
(Forbes.com) – VoxEU.org is a policy portal set up by the Centre for Economic Policy Research which aims to promote research-based policy analysis and commentary by leading scholars. Why do minority shareholders continue to hold stock despite the risk of expropriation by controlling shareholders? In this column, Sergey Chernenko, Assistant Professor at the Fisher College of Business at the Ohio State University, Fritz Foley, Associate Professor in the Finance area, Harvard Business School, and Robin Greenwood, Associate Professor at the Harvard Business School, provide two decades of evidence from Japan suggesting that many investors do not foresee these conflicts of interest, even when there is plenty of disclosure. Inefficient stock markets allow majority shareholders–often parent companies–to sell overpriced stock only to buy it back at a later date.
Starbucks Plans First Ever Cash Dividend
(MarketWatch) – Starbucks said Wednesday it will pay its first ever cash dividend, part of a new plan to return 35% to 40% of its net income to shareholders in the future.
The move is a sign Starbucks /quotes/comstock/15*!sbux/quotes/nls/sbux (SBUX 25.37, -0.05, -0.18%) will probably not be the high-flying growth company it was during the 1990s when its stores sprouted up all over America.
Starbucks Plans First Ever Cash Dividend
(MarketWatch) – Starbucks said Wednesday it will pay its first ever cash dividend, part of a new plan to return 35% to 40% of its net income to shareholders in the future.
The move is a sign Starbucks /quotes/comstock/15*!sbux/quotes/nls/sbux (SBUX 25.37, -0.05, -0.18%) will probably not be the high-flying growth company it was during the 1990s when its stores sprouted up all over America.
Straight From Hughes’ Mouth: Radio One Founder Kills Financial Rumors Once & For All
by China N. Okasi
Even if you haven’t caught up on TV One shows, or spent hours cruising HelloBeautiful.com, chances are you’ve experienced Tom Joyner’s flagship radio show, or flipped through the pages of GIANT magazine—all because of one powerful businesswoman, Cathy Hughes. Hughes’ Radio One conglomerate comprises print, online, television and radio properties that would impress any aspiring entrepreneur. After all, the self-made mogul came from meager ends.
At 32, she bought a puny AM radio station, WOL, using a loan she received after begging 32 banks (the 33rd lender finally gave in). She then grew her little radio station into Radio One, a communications powerhouse that now controls 53 radio stations (including controlling stake in the Tom Joyner Morning Show) reaching between 18 and 20 million listeners per week. Today, Radio One is one of only three publicly-traded companies in the United States that is owned by an African-American.
Yet, as powerful as Hughes and Radio One appear, they, like any marriage, have faced their share of criticism and struggle. For example, TheRoot.com writer, Natalie Hopkinson, harshly denounced Cathy Hughes as leading a “one-woman boycott” against the ‘Performance Rights Act,’ not because Hughes cared ‘oh-so-much’ about her black listeners, according to Hopkinson, but because the bill would require all radio stations, including Hughes’, to pay royalties to musicians—and Hughes didn’t like that idea. In other words, Hughes had selfish motives, according to Hopkinson. To add insult to injury, when Hughes considered a reverse stock split move in the interest of her company a few months ago, analysts tore into her decision, and The Washington Post described the company’s financial finagling as “puzzling.”
With all the banter centered around the Maryland-headquartered Radio One, The Atlanta Post decided to speak to Hughes herself to tell her side of the story. In her own words, she offered the following.
Hughes on why black radio plays an important role:
“We average between 18 and 20 million listeners a week. Black radio is as critical a communications vehicle now as it has ever been. Katrina hit. Haiti, the earthquake, hit. My phones were so jammed that you couldn’t get a call through. Black radio was there [when all those crises in our community happened]. People may have had CNN on, but the TV volumes were turned down, so they could listen to black radio stations. [Black radio] provides the same type of social relationship with its listening audience that the black church does, only without the religious aspect.”
Hughes on how she started in the radio business:
“I’ve always wanted to be in radio. I created the “quiet storm,” which went on to become the number one format in the history of radio. At one time, there were 489 radio stations airing my radio format—which is why I left Howard University, because I tried to get them to license [quiet storm] and they wouldn’t, so they literally blew billions of dollars because they didn’t license it. Even white stations were doing a form of the quiet storm.
My first acquisition [as a radio businessperson] was a radio station called WOL in Washington D.C. It’s our flagship station, and it had a price tag of $1 million…I had one little obstacle to overcome before I could buy it, and that was that I was about $999,000 dollars short. So, I put together a business plan and pitched 32 banks, all of whom said no. But, my 33rd lender was a woman from Chemical Bank of NY, first week on the job and she said yes!”
Toyota’s Second Shoe Drops: Shareholders Sue
(Daily Finance) In the wake of one of the most devastating recalls in auto history, Toyota Motor (TM) now has another problem on its hands: Angry shareholders.
Toyota faces several pending class actions that allege it publicly dismissed the seriousness of several design flaws while knowing that the problems might have caused a dramatic sell-off of Toyota shares.
