If getting the answer to your query leaves you little better off, you have probably asked the wrong person, the wrong question, or both. Last year the European Commission ordered a study into the impact of different kinds of shareholder voting regimes. This week it published the report, which failed to provide unequivocal evidence about how voting rights for investors affected value. But the inconclusive nature of what was essentially a descriptive exercise should not be taken as a sign that all is well with shareholder democracy.

For alongside the review of the academic literature on the subject was a survey of institutional investors. It clearly reveals their suspicion of corporate mechanisms that enable a company to treat shareholders unequally, for example by putting a ceiling on voting rights or giving multiple rights to some shares. Most said they took such devices into account when making investment decisions and four out of five said they would expect a discount on buying into a listed company that did not operate on a "one-share, one-vote" principle.