A New IPO-Style Stock Structure for Facebook, But No Official IPO Plans

Facebook has said for years that it has no near-term plans to go public — and it reiterated that point today when it said that it has created a dual-class stock structure that gives current shareholders 10 times the voting power of new shareholders. Called “class B” shares, this is part of a structure used by some companies to maintain control over voting rights. It lets investors maintain control over the company even if it makes an initial public offering and creates a “class A” set of shares to sell to the public.

The most obvious example of this is Google, which put in a similar structure before its 2004 IPO, although other Silicon Valley companies have similar structures, like Facebook platform social gaming company Zynga.

Here’s

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