People's share

As people share refers to shares , mostly as part of a (partial) privatization of a company in the initial public offering targeted at retail investors are sold.

Historically, the term arose from Ludwig Erhard's privatization policy . From 1959 to the end of 1965, the state wanted to part with part of its industrial property, but on the other hand wanted to encourage citizens and workers to participate in productive property. In addition to tax incentives for employee shares, the instrument of this policy was the issuance of so-called people's shares.

In order to increase the shareholder quota, the shares were deliberately not offered to institutional investors, but rather sold to small investors at favorable conditions. Only a limited number of shares were issued per buyer and these were given holding periods.

The most important of these people's shares were shares in Volkswagen AG , VEBA and Preussag .

Since the 1990s, the idea of ​​the people's share revived with the issue of Deutsche Telekom and Deutsche Post .

Web links

• Timo Kotowski: A company called the State , Frankfurter Rundschau, April 15, 2009