The European Commission’s draft directive on multiple voting rights would require Member States to authorise the issuance of multiple voting rights by companies listed on certain markets, with the main aim of making European financial markets more attractive to founders while alleviating the value destruction potential of multiple voting rights. The pursuit of this objective is in line with recent government initiatives in France to encourage the late-stage financing of start-ups, deemed insufficient to enable the emergence of major tech companies in France. However, such financing depends to a large extent on these companies’ access to the financial markets, which is both a source of funding in its own right and a liquidity solution encouraging late-stage private equity funds to invest in these companies in the first place. This note provides some reflections on how the national legislative act transposing the draft directive should be designed, and refers the reader to a non-exhaustive list of leading academic studies on the topic of multiple voting rights.
