CMCSK (MM)

By Lisa Beilfuss 

Comcast Corp. on Monday said it would seek shareholder approval to reclassify certain shares in the company, a move by the cable giant to simplify its equity structure.

In a regulatory filing, the Philadelphia-based company said its board has approved a proposal to reclassify issued shares of Class A special common stock as Class A common stock.

The two classes exist in part as a result of Comcast's acquisition of AT&T's cable operations, which it agreed to buy in 2001 for about $44 billion.

The reclassification will benefit shareholders by "eliminating investor confusion" caused by the existence of two classes of publicly traded stock and "improving the trading liquidity of our publicly traded stock, " Comcast said.

For approval, the proposal needs a majority vote by holders of Class A common shares and by holders of Class A special shares, voting separately, as well as a majority vote of Class A Common and Class B common holders voting together.

As of last Tuesday, Comcast had about 2.1 billion shares outstanding of Class A common stock and about 347.3 million shares outstanding of Class A special stock. The roughly 9.4 million Class B shares held by the company's founding Roberts family will remain untouched.

Comcast said that for the combined vote of Class A common stock owners and class B Common stock owners, the former class is entitled to 0.1353 votes per share, and the latter is entitled to 15 votes a share.

Shareholders of record as of Oct. 20 are eligible to vote.

Write to Lisa Beilfuss at lisa.beilfuss@wsj.com

Subscribe to WSJ: http://online.wsj.com?mod=djnwires

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 26, 2015 08:26 ET (12:26 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2015 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.