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It would be interesting to take a poll of ms shareholders to see if a majority want the dividend raised. It would be a great test to tell how broken corporate governemxe really is.

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I think the issue is that often tech company founders / management have preferred shares and therefore greater voting rights than general common stock shareholders. So even if a large group of common shareholders wanted to see dividends, they wouldn't have much authority.

I may be wrong though, I'm just starting to learn more about corporate finance.

This is true. Most companies are structured so that there exists a preferred share class with greater voting rights so to pass anything you'd have to get buy in from the board members who are the ones who typically own this share class.

> Most companies are structured so that there exists a preferred share class with greater voting rights

"Most"? The press accounts around Google's IPO said that voting preferences were somewhat rare. They mentioned some newspaper companies and Ford.

Do MS, Apple, or Cisco have voting preferences?

They do - it's called annual shareholder meeting where shareholders vote on issues. Getting something on the ballot isn't that hard, provided a lot of people care about the particular issue.

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