FOR New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), the listing of Alibaba, a giant Chinese e-commerce website, seems like a triumph. As The Economist went to press, the firm was pricing the offering; its shares were due to begin trading on September 19th. Amid all the excitement about whether the IPO would prove the world's biggest, another of its striking features has been largely forgotten: shareholders will have little control over how the firm is run.
对于纽约股票交易所来说，中国大型电子商务网站阿里巴巴的上市，似乎是一场胜利。就在本报付印之际，这家公司正在询价，其股票定于
9
月
19
日开始交易。就在阿里巴巴的
IPO
是否会成为世界第一的兴奋之中，此次
IPO
的另一个突出特点已被大多数人抛之脑后：股东对上市公司的运营控制权恐将丧失殆尽。
Alibaba only listed in New York because Hong Kong Stock Exchange, a more natural home, insists that shareholders have a say over management in keeping with their stake. The firm's owners, who balked at this notion, took their business to a more pliable venue. Technically, every Alibaba share has equal rights, but they are circumscribed ones. A pre-defined cabal of 30 managers of Alibaba or related companies, including the firm's chairman, Jack Ma (pictured above), will control nominations to a majority of seats on the board. According to Alibaba's prospectus, this group “may make decisions with which you [the shareholder] disagree, including decisions on important topics such as compensation, management succession, acquisition strategy, and our business and financial strategy”.
阿里巴巴之所以只能在纽交所上市，其原因就在于，作为其首选上市地点的香港股票交易所坚称，股东对公司运营的发言权应该与其所持有的股份保持一致。出于躲开这种观念的目的，阿里巴巴的所有者将他们的公司带到了一个有着更多选项的交易所。从技术上将，阿里巴巴的每一股股票的权利都是相等的。但是，这些股票是受限的。一个包括公司董事会主席马云在内的、由阿里巴巴或者相关公司的
30
名高管组成的小集团，将控制董事会大多数职位的任命。据招股说明书，这个集团“可能会在报酬补偿、管理承继、收购战略以及商业和金融战略等一些重大的问题上，做出与你［股东］相反的决定”。
Alibaba says this structure is needed to preserve the firm's culture. It is not that different from many tech firms, both Chinese and American, that have two or more categories of shares, some of which confer more say in the running of the company than others. Advocates of such skewed set-ups argue that they allow the founders of fast-growing firms to raise the necessary capital to pursue their long-term ambitions without having to deal with short-term mood swings among investors. By the same token, media companies with similar rules claim that allowing a small group of shareholdersto maintain control preserves editorial integrity.
阿里巴巴称，这种架构，对于保持公司文化来说，是必需的。它同中美两国许多同时拥有两种或两种以上股票的高科技公司的股权结构没有什么不同。只是有的公司，赋予其股票，在公司经营方面，更大的权利罢了。此类扭曲的股权结构的支持者认为，这种结构允许快速成长型公司的创始人筹集必需的资本，以追求其长期的抱负，而不必去理会投资者短期的情绪波动。同理，拥有同样规则的媒体公司宣称，允许少数股东保持掌控力，有利于保持采编统一。
“Dual-class” structures were common in America in the 1920s but were largely stamped out in a populist campaign led by William Ripley, a Harvard professor who labelled the practice a “crowning infamy” to “disenfranchise public investors”, according to a paper by Stephen Bainbridge of the University of California Los Angeles. There were exceptions—notably the listing of Ford in 1956 on NYSE and of media firms on the American Stock Exchange, a second-tier market—but Ripley's philosophy was largely intact until the 1980s when the rise of corporate raiders brought less democratic regimes back into fashion.
“双重股权”架构常见于上世纪
20
年代的美国。但是，在哈佛大学教授威廉·雷普利发动了一场民粹运动之后，这种股权架构基本上在市场中销声匿迹了。据加州洛杉矶大学的史蒂芬·班布里奇的一篇论文，雷普利曾给此类行为贴上了“无耻之极”的标签，是“对大众投资者权利的剥夺”。尽管期间有例外出现——其中最突出的是
1956
年福特公司在纽交所的上市，以及数家媒体公司在二板市场——美国证券交易所的上市。不过，雷普利的大多数观点还是被原封不动地保留了下来。直到上世纪
80
年代，随着蓄意收购者的出现，他们令较少民主的商业帝国重新流行起来，这种情况才发生了改变。
The Securities and Exchange Commission, the main market regulator, responded with a ban in 1988 but a court ruled that the agency had exceeded its authority. In a comprise, the SEC gave companiessubstantial discretion to choose their structure at the time of an offering,but not thereafter, on the grounds that this would allow investors to understand what they were buying and invest accordingly. Tech firms, led by Google, embraced the idea; few now list without some arrangement that guarantees the founders' continued sway.
1988
年，美国证券交易委员会（
SEC
），曾以市场监管的主角身份，应之以一纸禁令。但是，一家法庭却判定
SEC
越权行事。妥协之下，
SEC
给予了公司很大的自由量裁权，允许他们在上市时而不是在上市后，自由地选择股权结构。这样做是基于这样一种理念：它可以让投资者对他们将要购买或者投资的公司有一个相应的了解。以谷歌为首的技术公司欣然接受了这种理念；如今很少有上市公司不存在能保证其创始人继续统治下去的安排。
As a consequence, America accounts for the lion's share of public companies that give disproportionate rights to certain shareholders, with 55% of the 524 such companies in the global database of MSCI, a financial-data firm. Canada is a distant second with 40, although many firms in Europe resort to other measures that distort ownership rights. Britain used to have many such listed firms, but largely abandoned the practice under pressure from big investors. The Financial Conduct Authority, Britain's market regulator, recently issued a formal ban on skewed voting structures for firms listed on the London Stock Exchange's main market.
由此所导致的结果就是，据金融数据公司摩根士丹利的全球数据显示，在全球
524
个将巨大权利授予特定股东的上市公司中，美国所占的比例最大，为
55
％。加拿大位居第二，但是只有
40
家此类公司，与美国相去甚远。相比之下，许多欧洲公司则诉诸于另外几种扭曲所有者权力的措施。英国曾一度有许多这样的上市公司。但是，在大投资者的压力之下，大都已经放弃了这种实践。英国的市场监管者——金融市场行为监管局最近发布了一份正式禁令，禁止在伦敦股票交易所主板市场上市的公司采用扭曲的投票结构。
