March 10, 2008

Gore: Count Every Vote - And Mine 10 Times

Al Gore is set to make a bundle off the IPO of Current Media, owner of the tiny cable network CurrnentTV that hardly anybody watches. He's already been pulling down a rather large salary as "executive chairman" of the company, which has lost tens of millions of dollars since its inception. Business Week declares the IPO a bad deal for potential investors, and notes that the structure of the IPO will give Gore and Current Media co-founder Joel Hyatt "the kind of hammer-lock control over the company decried by shareholder rights activists and many of the same unions that supported Gore for years." That's because their "Class B" shares will be worth 10 votes in shareholder elections compared to a single vote per share for the "Class A" stock held by ordinary non-insider investors.

As University of Delaware corporate governance expert Charles Elson tells Business Week, the IPO's Class B shares are "hardly democratic - with a large D or a small d. The irony is that this is coming from a Democratic leader."