Naspers is in talks with one of the world's leading index providers about an control structure that threatens Africa's largest media company's weighting in indices as MSCI seeks to punish shares which give some investors more voting rights than others. Some global investors have voiced their discontent with the Cape Town-based group's structure in recent years and called for an overhaul, worrying about how much influence some of its nonexecutive directors actually have over the company. Naspers's has a dual-class share structure whereby its unlisted A shares have more voting rights than its JSE-listed N shares. The fact that its chairman, Koos Bekker, is a former CEO is also frequently cited by shareholders as a corporate-governance concern. MSCI, which measures equity markets in emerging markets such as South Africa and Brazil, is now considering reducing the weighting of companies like Naspers, which have "unequal voting shares" in its indices. Naspers is a major constituent in in...
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