Creating Share Classes
How to create share classes in Assembley — nominal value and votes per share — why votes per share must be a whole number, and how a shareholder's class turns their shares into capital and voting weight.
When different shares carry different voting power, you model that in Assembley with share classes. A share class is a named category that sets a nominal value per share and a number of votes per share, and each shareholder holds a number of shares in one class. This article explains how to create classes and the reasoning behind the whole-number rule.
What a share class is
A share class has three things: a name (for example, A-shares or B-shares), a nominal value per share (the kroner each share represents), and votes per share (how many votes each share carries). A classic structure:
- A-shares — nominal value 100 kr, 10 votes per share.
- B-shares — nominal value 100 kr, 1 vote per share.
A shareholder holding N shares of a class gets capital = N × nominal value and voting rights = N × votes per share. Share classes belong to a specific company group, so a group carries its own set of classes.
Why votes per share must be a whole number
Assembley requires votes per share to be a non-negative whole number — it rejects fractional values like 0.1 or 1.5. The reason is precision: because both the number of shares and the votes per share are whole numbers, the resulting voting weight is always a whole number, with no rounding and no ambiguity about how a fractional vote should be counted. Whole numbers keep the tally exact and the result defensible.
Zero is allowed. A class with 0 votes per share models voteless shares (stemmeløse aktier): its capital still counts toward the quorum, but holders of it receive no ballot.
If your real-world structure is expressed as a ratio (say A-shares carry ten times the votes of B-shares), express it as whole numbers — A = 10, B = 1 — rather than as a fraction.
When you create classes
You define share classes while setting up a company voter group, in the guided group-creation flow. Classes are optional: a company group that votes directly, without different share classes, simply skips the classes step and uses share capital and voting rights entered for each voter. Association groups don't use classes at all. See Creating and Managing Voter Groups and Voter Type: Company vs Association.
Classes and importing
If you import a register into a group that has classes, your file's Class column must match your class names and its Number of shares column gives each holder's shares — Assembley looks the class up and computes both capital and voting weight from it. So create your classes before importing. Rows naming a class that doesn't exist are flagged and skipped. See Importing Voters from CSV or Excel.
Where to go next
To see how a class turns into a number, read How Voting Weight Is Calculated. For the bigger picture of capital versus votes, see Understanding Share Classes and Voting Rights.
Related articles
- How Voting Weight Is CalculatedExactly how Assembley turns a company voter's shares and class into a voting weight — the shares × votes-per-share formula, when it is computed, and why it is frozen onto each ballot.
- Share Capital vs Voting Rights ExplainedWhy Assembley keeps share capital and voting rights as two separate numbers for company voters, what each one is used for, and how keeping them distinct lets quorum and the tally both be correct.
- Understanding Share Classes and Voting RightsHow Assembley separates share capital from voting rights, how share classes set votes per share to compute voting weight, and why quorum is measured against capital while the tally uses voting rights.