Let’s say I have a billion dollars worth of Tesla stock that I’ve owned for a decade, giving me twice as much votes as normal. You want to increase your voting power, and are willing to pay $1.5B for my shares to do so.
We sign a loan agreement. You loan me $1.5B at a high interest rate, secured by my shares and my agreement to vote them as per your instructions. If you demand repayment I can pay off the loan in full simply by surrendering my shares to you, and all interest is forgiven. If I want to repay the loan, I have to pay the full balance, all interest and a prepayment penalty in cash, no stock accepted.
You don’t want me to repay the loan so the shares can retain their ownership premium, and so I can’t without paying a massive penalty + interest. You can never require me to repay the $1.5B, I can simply surrender the shares, so I can spend it immediately any way I want.
So we can keep this “loan“ going for decades more, or until you want to sell these shares. Presumably you will sign a similar “loan” agreement with your buyer to maintain the voting power the share accumulated.
On its face it’s clearly harder, just because now you need three parties to sign a new loan agreement. It could be made much easier if the loan is assignable under same terms, especially if parts of the loan are assignable for proportionate parts of the shares.
And if the benefits are significant, I would bet this creates a whole tertiary layer of brokers, bankers and lawyers enabling these kind of transactions with standardized loan agreements and clearing houses.
Let’s say I have a billion dollars worth of Tesla stock that I’ve owned for a decade, giving me twice as much votes as normal. You want to increase your voting power, and are willing to pay $1.5B for my shares to do so.
We sign a loan agreement. You loan me $1.5B at a high interest rate, secured by my shares and my agreement to vote them as per your instructions. If you demand repayment I can pay off the loan in full simply by surrendering my shares to you, and all interest is forgiven. If I want to repay the loan, I have to pay the full balance, all interest and a prepayment penalty in cash, no stock accepted.
You don’t want me to repay the loan so the shares can retain their ownership premium, and so I can’t without paying a massive penalty + interest. You can never require me to repay the $1.5B, I can simply surrender the shares, so I can spend it immediately any way I want.
So we can keep this “loan“ going for decades more, or until you want to sell these shares. Presumably you will sign a similar “loan” agreement with your buyer to maintain the voting power the share accumulated.