If current trends continue, the super voting rights might become pretty irrelevant in a couple of years. Irrespective of whether some of us liked that change, the rationale underlying it was that the Watsa family had 41.8% of the voting power based on there being a total of ~23m shares outstanding. Prem seemed to know that he wanted to issue additional shares and seemed to be concerned that his control of the company would be threatened. In actual fact, the company did end up with about 28 million shares outstanding at one point. Clearly, the Watsa family's voting power would have dropped considerably due to FFH having increased the share-count by ~20%, so Prem's concerns were well founded.
Fast-forward to today, and we are likely down to a little more than 23m shares outstanding due to the NCIB and SIB processes of the past few years (it was 23.4m shares on Sept 30). So we are approximately back down to the share-count that triggered Prem to have his multiple voting shares re-weighted. If we keep following this trend for another couple of years, perhaps FFH will be back down to 19m or 20m shares, which would provide the Watsa family with majority control *without* the benefit of the changes what were implemented in 2015. At that point, if Prem elects to walk away from his role as either CEO or Chairman, there would be no loss of family control.
As I have suggested in the past, the buybacks are quite likely to continue for a few more years for the exact reason of maintaining family control. Prem knows very well that if he passed away, shareholders would have Ben and Christine on a very short leash. If he can get that share-count down to 19m or 20m, the kids would have 50%+ of the voting power. The power of incentives/motivation.
SJ