12-28-2021, 11:32 AM
(12-28-2021, 07:34 AM)cemanuel Wrote: Shares dictate ownership of a company. Two people with the same amount of ownership need to have the exact same rights, and get the same amount of shareholder distributions.
Is this correct? If I buy a stock as part of its IPO I will almost certainly have a lock-up period where I will be unable to sell shares - usually several months. But if I buy the stock on the first day it's publicly traded I can sell it tomorrow. I own shares, the IPO participant owns shares, those shares stipulate the same relative ownership of the company, but our rights are different.
So long as a company is clear about what it does why can't it make a stipulation regarding dividend eligibility?
As I said, I'm not sure if the rules are different on your side of the pond. I know that (at least in some countries) over here in Europe the law clearly states that all shareholders need to be treated equally. There are some ways around this, most commonly used is having different share classes. But you can't just suddenly decide that some holders of share class A are entitled to different distributions than others. I believe this is also done in the US, since I've often seen different classes of preferred shares with different dividend rates etc.
Now I have no idea how those IPO lock-up things work. Could it be an opt-in thing? So the directors of the company etc sign a legally binding agreement stating they won't sell until X date?