Differential Voting Rights for Directors of a Delaware Corporation Must Be Set Forth in the Certificate of Incorporation
By William Axtman and Dotun Obadina
In addressing a request for a preliminary injunction seeking the invalidity of a resolution adopted by the defendant directors through the exercise of disproportionate voting rights, the Delaware court reaffirmed that differential voting rights for directors of a Delaware corporation must be set forth in the certificate of incorporation.
In Sinchareonkul v. Fahnemann, the plaintiff, a director of Sempermed USA, Inc. (the “Company”), brought suit against two other directors of the Company, seeking declaratory judgments invalidating bylaw provisions that conferred disproportionate voting power on the defendants who are also directors of the Company. Semperit Technische Produkte Gesellschaft m. b. H. (“Semperit”), Sri Trang Agro-Industry Public Co., Ltd. (“Sri Trang”), and Siam Sempermed Corporation Ltd. (“Siam Sempermed”) agreed to form the Company in 1998 for the purposes of manufacturing latex surgical gloves and then distributing and selling them in the United States market.