I understand the difference between both but I remember reading somewhere that one was more beneficial to common shareholders. Which one is it or is objective?
I know that cumulative can be bad if there is a large minority shareholder or insiders that they can have a greater influence on board elections which could be a negative thing. Thank you in advance for insight and thoughts!!!
Cumulative voting can be beneficial to minority voters because they can use all of their votes for a single candidate, improving the chance that they can get at least one sympathetic member on the board; statutory voting ensures that their votes get spread out amongst several candidates, making it less likely that any one of them is elected.
In both kind of voting, shareholders get the right to number of votes equal to the number of shares they hold. e.g. you are a shareholder and owns 100 shares.
Statutory Voting:
You need to select 3 board members, so you have a total of 3*100 = 300 votes. You could cast 100 votes for each board position. You could not cast 50 votes to 2 board members and 200 to the third.
Cumulative Voting:
You have 300 votes and you can cast 300 votes to single board position and none to others. This is advantageous for individual investors coz they can apply all their votes toward one person.