Your Rights as a Stockholder

Corporations issue two fundamental kinds of stock, common and preferred. Ownership is shown by a stock certificate, usually bearing your name and the signatures of atleast two officers of the corporation.  Your name is also entered in the books od the corporation.

Common stockholders have the ordinary capital stock of the company. If you own common stock you are entitled to vote at the annual and special meetings of the corporation of the corporation where directors are elected or re-elected. If you do not attend these meetings you can appoint someone else to act as your proxy or representative and cast your vote.

Preferred stock ussually entitles you to the same voting rights as common stock. The difference between the two is that preferred stock entitles you to a fixed dividend every year regardless of the company's profit or loss.

If the corporation issues new stock, the shareholder has a right to buy proportionate number of the new shares to preserve shareholding pattern.

COMMENT : YouTube ban — Yasser Latif Hamdani

From the Daily Times:

No state, modern or ancient, secular or religious, has successfully managed to exercise thought control on its citizens

The big news this week in
the business world is the decision by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in the Google antitrust investigations. Holding that Google was not harming consumers in anyway, the FTC did not press ahead with a complaint against Google. This is a significant victory for Google but there is a loud chorus of voices against this decision, including by Microsoft’s general counsel who says that the FTC missed a golden opportunity to set things straight in terms of Google’s control over the market.

Conspiracy Theories

Monday, December 31, 2012 COMMENT : General Zia’s children and their conspiracy theories — Yasser Latif Hamdani Why does it not bother anyone that our constitutional fundamental rights are trampled on a daily basis by the wretched deep state? Renowned physicist and author Stephen Hawking once wrote that while everything is predetermined, there is no way to predict what is predetermined and, therefore, the illusory idea of free will is a workable model. In other words, there is a grand design but the details of this design are not known. I am not a physicist or a philosopher of science so I cannot comment on the scientific veracity of this claim. What I do know is that this idea is equally applicable to how we look at the world, its politics and economic systems. Last week I met two recent graduates, one from LUMS and the other from FAST, both prestigious institutions of higher learning in Lahore. What they had to say terrified, amused and angered me, beginning with freemasons who controlled the world to the 9/11 World Trade Centre attacks being the CIA’s work through remotely controlled drones. They told me about the Knights Templar, the Knights of Malta and about the quest for the Holy Grail. I was further inundated with information about the US hoarding gold in Fort Knox and the grand design to dominate the world by a handful of 33-degree Freemasons. I was also informed that all US presidents are freemasons though they were not completely sure if Mr Obama fits the bill (because they told me that Freemasons is an exclusively white male club). In short, it was a thoroughly entertaining but at times disturbing conversation.

Punjab's Chief Minister

By Yasser Latif Hamdani

Thanks to the three on average traffic jams caused by the Punjab government that an average person encounters on the way back from office, one has endless time on one’s hands with nothing to do. I like to pass the time by observing motorcyclists making their way between cars, in flagrant disregard of all traffic laws. Now I do not wish to sit in judgment on our bi-wheelers as many laws are broken by almost all kinds of vehicle. A profound lack of respect for authority and law is what characterises us as a nation.

Apple v. Samsung - the saga continues

By Natasha Lomas

In the latest episode of the Apple vs. Samsung legal drama that’s been playing out in the U.S. district court of Northern California, the pair met again at an appeal hearing on Thursday to argue their respective corners. Judge Lucy Koh is reviewing the jury’s $1.05 billion verdict against Samsung.

Apple is hoping for a ban on the sale of Samsung devices the jury deemed to infringe its patents when they returned their verdict back in August, while Samsung wants to reduce the damages award against it — or trigger a new trial.

Counterfeit coins

By Yasser Latif Hamdani

The grand old man of Jinnah’s Pakistan, the unparalleled Ardeshir Cowasjee, died last month. This great secular urban citizen of Pakistan has managed to blaze quite a trail for those who still want to see this country prosper and reclaim Jinnah’s idealism for Pakistan. Unfortunately, there continues to be no realisation of the precipice our deviation from Jinnah’s vision of a secular state has brought us to. Naysayers on both the right and the left continue to bulldose the memory of Mr Jinnah for their own petty self-interests. Cowasjee rescued the idea of Jinnah’s Pakistan from oblivion but, unfortunately, one Cowasjee is not enough to counter the tomes of misrepresentation that have passed for historical works in Pakistan.

1-10 Application update Bhagat Singh

The Tehrik-e-Hurmat-e-Rasool, a movement launched by the Jamaat-ud-Dawah, had filed the petition against a move by authorities to rename the roundabout.
Zahid Butt, a local trader who filed the petition on behalf of the organisation, claimed that RAW, India's external intelligence agency had funded the Bhagat Singh Foundation to raise the issue.
He claimed the Foundation lobbied the Dilkash Lahore Committee that recommended the renaming of the roundabout.
Senior JuD leader Maulana Amir Hamza, who heads the Tehrik-e-Hurmat-e-Rasool, has said the group will not allow places to be named after Hindus, Sikhs or Christians.
"Pakistan is a Muslim country and such ideas cannot be appreciated," he said recently.
The JuD wrote a strongly worded letter to district administration chief Noorul Amin Mengal and other government officials, warning them not to rename the roundabout after a "Hindu freedom fighter".
The Dilkash Lahore Committee had rejected all objections and asked authorities to notify the new name for the roundabout without delay.
In a related development, civil society activists have filed two applications in the Lahore High Court, asking it to make them parties to the case challenging the renaming of the roundabout.
Activists Taimur Rehman and Saeeda Diep filed the applications in the Lahore High Court yesterday through lawyer Yasser Latif Hamdani to support the renaming of the chowk after Bhagat Singh.

These applications were accepted.