, Columnist
Hedge-Fund Manager Wants to Rearrange GM's Stock
He thinks it would look much nicer with a few cosmetic changes.
If you own a share of General Motors Co. stock, what do you really own? Common stock is a slippery beast, but you can write a list of its main attributes. It goes something like this:
None of that exactly captures the essence of what you own: Facebook Inc., for instance, has never paid a dividend, has said it doesn't plan to, is too big for anyone to realistically buy, and your voting rights are pretty worthless. (It does do some stock buybacks.) Nonetheless its common stock is worth more than $400 billion. There is a mysterious residue to the value of common stock that comes from somewhere other than the lawyers' list of its formal rights.