Multiple voting rights
A multiple voting right in the context of a stock corporation is the special right of a shareholder based on the articles of association to cast more votes than corresponds to his participation.
definition
As a result of multiple voting shares, the shareholder has above-average voting rights in relation to the capital participation.
history
Multiple voting rights were mainly issued from 1920 to 1923, at a time of high inflation, to protect against foreign infiltration. The multiple voting shares were mostly owned by the management of the stock corporations.
Current regulations
Since 1998 they have been prohibited by the law on control and transparency in the corporate sector . Existing multiple voting rights lapse within a transitional period of five years in return for adequate compensation of their value. The supreme authority of a country responsible for the economy can, however, grant multiple voting rights if these are necessary to safeguard predominant macroeconomic interests.
Provisions on multiple voting rights are regulated in Section 12 (2) sentence 1 of the German Stock Corporation Act. Furthermore, according to the German Corporate Governance Code, the number of multiple voting rights is a particularly noteworthy deviation from the Corporate Governance Standard.
