One potentially powerful class of shareholders — employees — seems to be rousing, too.
Several experts said the ruling would have little effect on securities fraud cases because a misrepresentation by a corporate executive is commonly seen as injuring a company's whole class of shareholders.
In the Oxford case, Sullivan & Cromwell, Oxford's lawyers, argued that two individual plaintiffs selected by Milberg Weiss were unfit to represent a class of shareholders claiming to have been defrauded by the company.
"They haven't yet appreciated that when you take public funds, you now have a new class of shareholders that are going to be more vocal and impatient with the way you operate".
"This is something that we agreed to do so that Bill Lerach could become the lead attorney on the case," said Melissa Moye, chief economist for Amalgamated Bank, who reasoned that if stepping back was the only way to get Mr. Lerach selected to represent the whole class of shareholders, it would.
Last year, as a group they put some 200 companies in their cross hairs and replaced 19 chief executives, according to the law firm Sidley Austin, putting pressure on virtually every board in the country to pay attention to this vocal class of shareholders.
Spinoffs also attract a new class of shareholders;investors who don't like conglomerates.
As Nelsen put it, "we are talking about bringing a whole new class of shareholders into the market".
Split capital investment trusts have different classes of shareholder, with some investing for income and some for growth.
Instead of creating multiple classes of shareholders, governments and regulators may want to think about how they define fiduciary duties in the financial realm.
