Index Rules and Analyst Fatigue

Indexes.

In recent years, founders of big tech companies have realized that they can take their companies public while still maintaining control in perpetuity, by setting up dual- or even triple-class stock structures and issuing low- or even nonvoting stock to the public. A lot of people have worried about this, but now they can stop worrying: That trend is over. I mean, Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc. and Snap Inc. have already done it, but don't expect too many more, because S&P Dow Jones Indices has announced that the S&P 500 and some of its other big indexes "will no longer add companies with multiple share class structures." Existing multiple-class companies (like Alphabet and Facebook -- but not Snap, which never made it into the S&P 500) will stay.