Below, a continuation of our bibliography of thought-provoking articles on issues related to right-sizing regulation, staying private versus going public, and related topics:

The Decline in IPOs and the Private Equity Market

Up-C IPOs

Dual-Class Structures

In his paper, “Sunrise, Sunset:  An Empirical and Theoretical Assessment of Dual-Class Stock Structures,” author Andrew Winden presents an analysis of initial and sunset dual-stock provisions based on over 100 companies, including pre-2000 and post-2000 structures excluding up-C IPOs.  The paper notes that among the sample set there are many different sunset provisions and provides very useful analysis of these.  The types of sunset provisions include passage of a specified period of time, dilution of high vote shares or controller ownership of such shares down to a low percentage of the aggregate number of outstanding shares, a reduction in the number of high vote shares or the number of high vote shares held by the controller as a percentage of the controller’s original ownership, death or incapacity of certain control persons or the departure of the founder, or conversion upon transfers of the high vote shares to persons that are not permitted holders.  Of course, a significant percentage of companies with dual-class structures, approximately 39% of those that went public after 2000, did not have sunset provisions.  The paper then offers an assessment of the utility of each of the particular approaches to implementing a sunset provision.