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The week's question
In December 2024, in the thread "Re: BRK: Why Not XOM?", BreckHutHigh asked the members: "What about the long road trips with kids?" This week it is put to everyone again. The button below opens the small thread re-asking it - read what others have said so far, then give your own answer as an ordinary reply.
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Stocks A to Z / Stocks B / Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A)
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Author: mungofitch 🐝🐝🐝 GOLD
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Number: of 21944 
Subject: Re: Attractiveness of Price
Date: 06/24/24 3:28 PM
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Interesting question: would it be worth a premium to buy control of a public company? Are there examples?

Assuming we are talking about one-share-one-vote company, there are complications...as you cross various thresholds of ownership you may be required by the local regulators (depending where the company is based) to stop buying before getting approvals, or make a bid for the entire portion you don't own. Barring those hurdles, though, you could just keep buying till you have control and then vote yourself a new board if you liked. Perhaps useful for setting the capital allocation strategy to something that suits you.

For companies with super-voting shares, I think a fair generalization is that the voting shares are really worth a premium, but only to a very specific set of individuals. If you're not one of those few, the votes are worth nothing to you, except in one way: those few individuals will normally be the ones bidding the extra that makes the voting shares have a higher price, so there may be a price premium you can realize when you sell.

Alphabet is really a strange exception in that regard. It makes no economic sense that the voting shares trade more cheaply (though of course supply and demand can trump economic sense for quite a while). This oddity is relatively recent, too: the voting shares traded as expected at a small premium to the non-voting shares until late 2019.

Jim

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This community has written 21,448 posts about Berkshire Hathaway. The article-length ones it recommended most:
BRK: Why Not XOM? · 62 recs · 2024
Second quarter comments · 60 recs · 2023
Berkshire's Profit Contributors · 57 recs · 2023
Summary of 2Q 2026 · 54 recs · 2026
3Q Summary · 53 recs · 2024
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