RE:Voting non voting spreadI agree, the spread seems too large. My two thoughts on this are:
1. There is a fund or funds that are accumulating the voting shares in order to put pressure on management to do things like spinoff the real estate, buyback shares, uplist the stock, pay a dividend etc. The Reitmans family obviously has voting control, but owning a certain percentage of the votes could get you on the board or at least in the room with management to voice your reasoning.
2. This is a bit more theoretical, but if you think the company should not be public anymore because it is family controlled (there is no need to raise capital and no need for family shareholder liquidity) then voting shares might be worth a premium. If you are the Reitmans and want to take the company private at the lowest cost to you, I think the first step would be to announce a large buyback or even SIB and buyback as many A shares as possible. Once this is done, you already control most of the voting shares and now only have to pay a takeover premium for the remaining shares you don't already own. The fact that the stock is at ~$5/share and it has over $6/share just in cash and real estate, means you could pretty much finance the deal with these assets and get the operating company for free. It is this takeover premium for the voting shares, which might be another longer view reason for the premium.
Either way, the operating business is worth at least $8/share with another $6/share in non-operating assets, so the stock is worth as least $14/share in my mind.