In this segment from Motley Fool Money, host Chris Hill, Million Dollar Portfolio's Jason Moser, Total Income's Ron Gross, and Supernova and Rule Breakers' David Kretzmann discuss what led the S&P to ban companies with dual-class share structures. It certainly looks like a rebuke of Snap's (SNAP 3.03%) IPO. But will we see this policy applied retroactively to current S&P 500 members?
A full transcript follows the video.
This video was recorded on Aug. 4, 2017.
Chris Hill: Earlier in the week, Standard & Poor's announced that it was enforcing a ban on companies with dual-class share structures to join the S&P 500 Index. This is seen, Jason, very much as a shot across the bow at Snap, because before Snap went public, they put out an S-1 that said, "Nobody gets any voting rights, period."
Jason Moser: Yeah, I'm sure in the executive suite, they're probably looking around and saying, "Hey, that's not fair, we're not the only ones." And there's a point to that, for sure. But I think this was the straw that really broke the camel's back. They went into this IPO stating that, this is the situation, and if you want to be a shareholder, that's great, but you're going to have zero say-so. And that typically runs counter to the notion of being a public company. That's not to say there aren't other companies out there that don't have a similar share structure, but I think that Snap could have gone about this business a little bit more diplomatically, so to speak. It seems like between Snap and Uber, Uber isn't public yet, but these two companies are in a race to see who can step in poop more often, and so far it seems like Snap's winning, but Uber is right on their tail.
David Kretzmann: I feel like for the S&P's decision to have a lot of sting, they should kick out Alphabet and Under Armour --
Ron Gross: Good luck with that.
Kretzmann: Yeah, probably not going to happen.
Hill: You going to hold your breath on that?
Kretzmann: No, I don't think so.
Moser: [laughs] That would have Wall Street up in arms.
