A Massachusetts city's pension fund has sued mega Web-search company Google, over concerns that Google's proposed stock split would generate non-voting shares.
According to Bloomberg news service, the retirement board for the City of Brockton, Mass. has filed suit in Delaware, claiming that Google failed to act in the best interest of its shareholders by creating the new stock.
"The reclassification effort is a thinly veiled attempt to entrench [Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin] as dominant shareholders of Google by creating a non-voting class of Google stock in order to preserve their voting power into perpetuity," the fund stated, in a suit document released to the public Monday.
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As part of the reclassification, shareholders will receive a dividend on non-voting stock in a 2 for 1 stock split, versus existing common shares which hold a vote apiece.
The pension fund asks a judge to block the plan and award unspecified damages.
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