She agreed that a dual- or multitiered leadership structure should at least be considered.
"This was a sophisticated and lucrative operation with a multitiered management structure," Mr. Spitzer said at the time.
Travel companies defend the multitiered pricing structure, saying that they set prices according to what each market will bear.
"This was a sophisticated and lucrative operation with a multitiered management structure," the state attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, who oversees the task force, said in a statement.
Like Roche, Nestle has a multitiered capital structure that limits most shareholders' rights to elect board members or to vote on company policies.
The practice has also come under attack elsewhere in Europe, notably in Switzerland, where the maverick investor Martin Ebner has demanded an overhaul of the multitiered share structure at Roche, the pharmaceutical giant.
But as Eliot now knows, you haven't been humbled until you get linked to high-priced prositutes when you once spoke these words with revulsion about a New York prostitution ring: "This was a sophisticated and lucrative operation with a multitiered management structure.
(Multitiered share structures are not unheard-of in the United States, of course. Some formerly family-owned media companies, including The New York Times Company, use them to preserve journalistic independence).
In much of Europe, multitiered share structures -- which either give extraordinary voting rights to a special class of shares or deny voting rights to most shareholders in exchange for a larger dividend -- continue to let small groups of investors, often families, control companies and insulate executives from the results of their poor performance.
Boasting the highest pagoda in Japan (five stories, 180 feet) and massive structures with multitiered brackets, this is a major architectural complex with a lotus pond and gardens.
