Professor  Steven Davidoff Solomon posted this article to the DealBook yesterday highlighting France’s new 2-votes for long-term shareholders law:  The Florange Law.  

The centerpiece of the Florange Law is a mandate that French companies give two votes to any share held for longer than two years. This goes against the historical one-vote-for-every-share system that most countries have. The law allows an opt-out if two-thirds of shareholders approve one by March 31, 2016.

ISS issued a guide (Download Impact-of-florange-act-france) opposing the law and encouraging investors to pressure directors to opt out of the law (through amendments to corporate bylaws) before the deadline.  

Professor Davidoff Solomon questions the strength of the one-share-one-vote corporate democracy in the U.S., noting that recent IPOs, like Facebook, went public with two classes of stock as a anti-takeover measure.  There is also the related question of what impact a law like this would have given the turnover rates of many institutional investors. 

-Anne Tucker