
The Golden Share Makes a Dubious Comeback
Golden shares can be seen as a particular version of dual-class governance structures that allow company founders voting rights exceeding their economic shareholding in a company. The difference is that the disproportionate power is held by a government rather than an entrepreneur like Mark Zuckerberg at Meta Platforms Inc. Golden shares are mostly associated with the European privatizations late last century, like BAE Systems Plc, Rolls-Royce Plc and Royal KPN NV.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
34 minutes ago
- Yahoo
3 stats from Meta's Q2 as Zuckerberg shares ‘superintelligence' vision
This story was originally published on Marketing Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily Marketing Dive newsletter. Meta Platforms' revenue increased 22% year over year for a total of $47.52 billion in Q2 2025, according to an earnings statement, beating Wall Street expectations. The online commerce vertical was the largest contributor to year-over-year growth in ad revenue, with a 'meaningful percent' of its ad revenue coming from campaigns using the company's generative artificial intelligence (AI) features, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on an earnings call. The tech giant attributed the strong performance of its underlying advertising business to the power of AI to drive greater efficiency. Improvements to its AI-powered recommendation engine for ads and content has driven more ad conversions on Instagram (roughly 5%) and Facebook (3%) and led to increases in time spent on both platforms. By the numbers 22% Year-over-year percentage increase of Meta's Q2 revenue, which was $47.52 billion. Revenue grew 16% in Q1 11% Year-over-year percentage increase in ad impressions delivered across Meta's Family of Apps, up from 5% in Q1 3.48B Family daily active people (DAP) on average in June 2025, up 6% year over year Meta's robust growth demonstrates that the company not only weathered the uncertainty that has roiled the entire economy, but could perhaps benefit from it, as marketers looked for lower cost, higher performing advertising, according to eMarketer senior analyst Minda Smiley. 'Its strong quarter signals that the broader digital advertising market might not yet feel the pain from tariffs, though that could change. And Meta, with its massive userbase and savvy advertising platform, is likely to fare better than smaller social networks should advertiser pullbacks set in later this year,' Smiley said in emailed comments. Adoption of generative AI ad creative tools continues to grow, with nearly 2 million advertisers using video generation features Image Animation and Video Expansion. Text generation tools are also generating strong results, according to the company. While the expansion of AI is driving growth across the company's revenue centers, it is also growing expenses, which Meta now expects to be in the range of $114 to $118 billion for the full year — a growth rate of 20% to 24% year over year. Infrastructure is the largest single driver of growth. Despite the high cost, Meta is still full-steam ahead on AI, with Zuckerberg using both the earnings call and a separate message on social media to hype the next stage of the technology. Meta believes that superintelligence, defined as AI that surpasses human intelligence, is now in sight. 'Meta's vision is to bring personal superintelligence to everyone — so that people can direct it towards what they value in their own lives. We believe this has the potential to begin an exciting new era of individual empowerment,' Zuckerberg said on the call.


Washington Post
42 minutes ago
- Washington Post
Tennis star Novak Djokovic among investors to buy a stake in second-tier French soccer club Le Mans
LE MANS, France — Tennis star Novak Djokovic is part of a group of investors who have bought a stake in French second-tier soccer team Le Mans, along with ex-Formula 1 drivers Felipe Massa and Kevin Magnussen, the club said Friday. Le Mans said in a statement that they join other new financial investors into the club, including Latin American sports investment firm OutField and Georgios Frangulis, the founder and chief executive of OakBerry. Frangulis is the boyfriend of three-time women's Grand Slam champion Aryna Sabalenka.
Yahoo
44 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Evercore's Purchase of Robey Warshaw May Birth Trans-Atlantic M&A Titan
It's a deal designed to launch a thousand others. On Wednesday, Evercore announced that it's acquiring London-based investment bank Robey Warshaw, a similarly modest boutique firm with an outsized presence in the M&A space, for nearly $200 million. The only question: Who's soaking up the advisory fees? READ ALSO: Big Tech Pulls Off a Very Big Earnings Week and Barnburner Figma IPO Offers Good Omen as Klarna Reconsiders Debut International Man of M&A History Founded by former US Deputy Treasury Secretary Roger Altman in 1995, Evercore has grown into something of a full-fledged rival of major Wall Street banks in the M&A space. Last year, the firm finished sixth in PriceWaterhouseCoopers' US advisory fee-ranking report after advising on 151 deals worth a total of $291 billion. In its second-quarter earnings report this year, Evercore touted its advisory business scoring record first-half revenues after handling four of the 10 largest transactions so far in 2025, including Dick's Sporting Goods' $2.5 billion acquisition of Foot Locker and Cox Communications' merger with Charter Communications. Now, Evercore is applying its M&A expertise to its own business, with the Robey Warshaw acquisition marking its largest deal since buying research and brokerage firm ISI Group over a decade ago. Why? Strategic expansion, of course, and perhaps because Evercore sees something of itself in Robey Warshaw: Despite employing just 18 people in total, Robey Warshaw has made itself a mainstay in the UK (which remains the second-largest market for investment banking fees behind the US), advising on some of the biggest UK deals in recent memory, including SoftBank's £24 billion acquisition of chipmaker Arm and AB InBev's $79 billion purchase of SABMiller. Much of the firm's success has been credited to its leadership team, including co-founders Simon Warshaw and Simon Robey, with the latter receiving nearly 50% of the firm's profits each year, per the Financial Times. The deal locks in each of Robey Warshaw's five partners, including the 65-year-old Robey, for at least six years. European Vacation: The deal will help bolster Evercore's presence in Europe, where it placed 13th by deal volume in PwC's advisory rankings last year. It's the bank's first major acquisition on the continent since its roughly £86 million takeover of boutique investment firm Lexicon in 2011, though it has recently pulled off some high-profile talent poaching in France, including the hiring earlier this year of former top Citigroup dealmaker Luigi de Vecchi to serve as Evercore's European chair. This post first appeared on The Daily Upside. To receive delivering razor sharp analysis and perspective on all things finance, economics, and markets, subscribe to our free The Daily Upside newsletter.