A:
You don’t get a control say in a company’s day-to-day operations, but, depending on whether you own voting or non-voting carry, you may have a hand in shaping its board of directors and deciding on special streams.
Voting Stock: If you own voting stock and you’re a shareholder of record when a sentence must be made through a vote, you have a right to vote on it. The claim to vote for a company’s directors or on a specific business decision is similar to the fair to vote for an elected government office — e.g. senator or local mayor — or on an matter put to a ballot vote. As a registered voter, you aren’t obligated to vote. As all right, you don’t really get a direct say in daily government operations (although you do vote on the people that do). The one leading difference between voting as a citizen and voting as a shareholder is that if, as a shareholder, you decide not to submit your vote, there is the possibility that a default hand-picked will be made regardless of your true desires. That’s why it’s high-ranking to carefully read the fine print on the proxy form sent to you.
Non-Voting Regular: A non-voting stock doesn’t allow you to participate in votes affecting shareholders and the throng. With this class of shares, investors forfeit their truthful to have a say in the direction of the company for what is often an incremental stock premium advantage over voting shares.
For example, Alphabet Inc. (the company when the world was younger known as Google) in April 2014 split its stock into three distinctions of shares to preserve the control of founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Distinction A (GOOGL) shares are held by regular investors with regular sponsor rights. Class B shares (which don’t typically trade in the open Stock Exchange) are held by the founders and have 10 times the voting power of the Genre A stock. Class C (GOOG) shares have no voting rights and are normally expand oned by employees and Class A stockholders. (See: What’s the Difference Between Alphabet’s GOOG and GOOGL?)
While the two merits of stock have historically tracked each other in price advance, those voting rights will cost you more, as GOOGL helpings typically trade at a premium to the GOOG shares. For example, on Dec. 12, 2017, GOOGL allowances closed at $1,048.77 a piece, while non-voting GOOG stock penny-pinching at $1,040.48.
Who Decides?
Not all companies offer these two different types of stock, and not all classes of voting stock have the same voting rights. If you are interested in playing a relatively (albeit a very small one) in the decision making processes of a company, assemble sure you buy the right type of stock.
If you would like to learn multitudinous about stocks and the stock market, check out this Stock Basics Tutorial. For profuse on the issue of shareholder rights, check out this Knowing Your Goods As A Shareholder and What is the investor rights movement?