Reuters Holdings Plc’s plans to eliminate the A shares, which carry four votes each, but are not traded, involve the company converting the 97.3m A shares into the same number of B shares carrying one vote each, thereby reducing the newspaper groups’ votes in the company to 22% from 54%: about 32.3m of the new B shares are to be sold through underwriters; a founders share will continue to ensure that no single holder can have more than 15% of the votes; after the transactions, Reuters will have 412m shares outstanding, and hopes the move will make it easier to get its share traded on foreign stock exchanges and to make acquisitions.
