Descendants of Bristol Bay Native Corporation shareholders—and eligible individuals who missed the original enrollment—can now become shareholders with their own stock in the corporation. That's after shareholders voted to open enrollment at an annual meeting earlier this month. The corporation says the enrollment application will open in mid-November.
The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, first signed in 1971, limited shareholders to those born before the act was passed. In 1991, an amendment removed those limits on enrollment and eligibility.
Jason Metrokin, BBNC’s president and CEO, says they have been discussing open enrollment since the 1991 amendment. He explains how open enrollment will work, how the new stock will be managed, and what this means for BBNC’s future.
Sutherland: BBNC had a vote earlier this month where shareholders voted to approve descendant enrollment. What does this mean for shareholders and descendants?
Metrokin: Yeah, thanks for asking. So Saturday, Oct. 4, BBNC held its annual shareholder meeting, and, you know, made history.
We’ve been talking to shareholders for, gosh, a couple of decades, to be honest, about the potential for descendants to enroll in the corporation, and over those many years, also working to educate shareholders on what this could mean for themselves, for their kids or grandkids, and also for the corporation. The shareholders voted on the issue and overwhelmingly passed a resolution to allow the corporation to open its enrollment to include descendants. So, yeah, it was history and a very exciting time.
Sutherland: So what does this mean when you say you've been working to educate shareholders on what this would mean? How does this change what was happening prior and the way that the corporation functions?
Metrokin: Probably dating back to the 1990s, when the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act first allowed native corporations to enroll those who were born after Dec. 18, 1971, BBNC every couple of years would do a survey or a poll of our shareholders asking what they felt about enrolling descendants. And you know, in the early days, there wasn't as much interest because of the potential devaluation or dilution of existing stock or voting power.
The descendants were getting original shares of stock from their family members, so the amount of stock that BBNC first created was just getting passed on from generation to generation. And that works, and it worked for quite a number of years. But the change in the Act allows Alaska Native corporations to actually create new stock, and in this case, for descendants. And we continued to poll and survey our shareholders, and overwhelmingly, more and more shareholders were beginning to see that allowing our descendants to really be a part of the corporation, to engage further with their own shares of stock, became more of an interest to them and more popular.
And so BBNC set out and established some goals where, if we were to open our roles to descendants, our goal would be to not see current shareholder dividends go down in price, but to continue to increase, and so that is still our goal. Also, the number of shares that BBNC would distribute to descendants is important to try to mitigate or limit the amount of dilution or devaluing of the stock is certainly a factor. And so passing this vote on Oct. 4 allows BBNC to enroll descendants with 20 shares of stock different than the original 100 shares of stock that our original shareholders received back in the early 1970s.
Sutherland: And will descendant enrollment continue into perpetuity? Will the next generation automatically be eligible for descendant enrollment?
Metrokin: Yeah, our plan is to continue once we open enrollment. And our goal for accepting descendant applications to become shareholders is mid-November of 2025, so you know here next month that open enrollment will continue, you know, into the future, in perpetuity, if you will.
The difference is original shares of stock can be passed down from generation to generation. However, the descendant stock is what we call life estate. And so a descendant will receive their own stock, Class D stock, we call it in BBNC, and when that descendant should pass away, that stock then goes back to the corporation for our redistribution to other descendants into the future. So there's some different ways in which we treat these types of stock.
Sutherland: So you mentioned that the application opens in November for descendants. Who exactly is eligible to apply?
Metrokin: So those descendants that can show that they have a lineal tie to an original shareholder and that descendant is born after Dec. 18, 1971, they can qualify to be a Class D or descendant shareholder. So proving that ancestry is the main thing. And again, it's just simply showing through birth certificates, social security numbers, and potentially other documentation, that they are a lineal descendant of an original shareholder.
Sutherland: I see. How about adoptees? Do adoptees of shareholders qualify?
Metrokin: They can. An adoptee of an original BBNC shareholder, or descendant of an original BBNC shareholder, can also be eligible to receive descendant stock. That's become pretty common amongst Alaska Native corporations. You know, there have certainly been debates around, Are they Alaska Native? But really, all it's all about, you know, we're a family, you know, type of corporation and allowing for adoptees of Alaska native BBNC shareholders and descendants, is really important that we pass on that family, you know, engagement and family acceptance and so very commonplace today for Alaska Native corporations to allow for adoptees to be eligible as shareholders as well.
Sutherland: So descendants will be able to apply for 20 shares of Class D stock, and eligible missed enrollees will be able to apply for 100 shares of Class C stock. What is the difference between those two stocks?
Metrokin: Sure. With the passage of this vote on Oct. 4, not only did it create a new class of stock for descendants, that's the Class D, but it also allows for anyone who missed the original enrollment in a corporation back in the 1970s. Maybe they were deployed with the military, or they were living out of state or out of country, and just didn't know about enrollment in BBNC at that time. We think there are very few of them, but there may be some. And so this vote also allowed for those Class C or missed enrollees to be eligible to become a shareholder as well.
Now the difference being, those original potential shareholders that missed out would receive the same treatment of stock as original shareholders did, so 100 shares of stock.
By the way that the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act was written, they would still need to be at least one-quarter blood quantum, Alaska Native blood quantum, to qualify for that missed enrollee stock. But they would receive the original 100 shares of BBNC stock. The Class D, or descendant stock, does not have a blood quantum requirement, so there's a big differentiation there, where descendants, as long as they can prove their lineal descendancy, and they were born after Dec. 18, 1971, can be eligible for that descendant stock, and it does not require an Alaska Native blood quantum.
Sutherland: You said that the resolution passed overwhelmingly. Do you have specifics on the numbers of that vote?
Metrokin: Sure. What I can say is that there were actually two votes. The first vote was a resolution on allowing the corporation to open its enrollment to descendants, and that resolution had a favorability of about 86%. You know, depending on the different treatment of quorum, would determine, you know, how many votes it took to actually pass that resolution. But the favorability was very high in terms of the number of people that voted in favor of it. Like I said, about 86%.
The second vote was actually on a Settlement Trust, where BBNC, when we pay our dividends, each quarter, the money goes into a Settlement Trust, or it's like a savings account, where the money that's paid into the trust is actually what pays the shareholder dividend. The importance of that is when the shareholder receives their dividend from the trust, they're receiving it tax-free. So that second vote allowed for the descendants of BBNC, as they enroll as shareholders, they too could be paid a dividend from that trust that also passed with about an 85% favorability rating, but required a different quorum obligation for that vote, and so the technical difference of passage between the resolution and The ballot are different, but it's safe to say that both passed with a 85 to 86% favorability rating.
Sutherland: And how many shareholders participated in the vote?
Metrokin: So, currently we have 12,000 again, those are round numbers, current shareholders. Whether they were original or they are descendants who received original shares of stock to gifting our inheritance. When we first started the corporation back in 1972, we had about 5,500 shareholders, roughly, and then through their passing and gifting of shares to their descendants, it's grown to about 12,000 individuals today.
So, in order to meet our quorum requirement for the resolution, it had to be at least 33% or a third of our shareholders participating via proxy or in person. So we certainly had more than that, I believe it was closer to 60% of our quorum requirement, so well above the 33%.
For the ballot initiative to allow our Settlement Trust to pay dividends to those new descendant enrollees. It was a higher quorum requirement of 50% plus one. And I believe we had, again, you know, roughly 60 to 62% of our quorum met. So we were beyond that threshold as well. And I would say the numbers haven't come in yet this year, because it's only been, you know, a few days, but safe to say we had, you know, a good level of participation, especially for a historic vote such as this.
Sutherland: Is there anything else I'm missing that you would like to add?
Metrokin: Sure. As we get closer to that application portal opening up for descendants to apply, it's important that shareholders and their families know that we're going to be messaging this a lot in the coming weeks through social media. And then we have additional staff on hand that can take phone calls and emails to help answer questions. They're really dedicated to the enrollment of our descendants, because we'll have roughly 12,000 individual descendants who may qualify for enrollment. We want to make sure that they have the ability to talk to someone, email with someone, or engage with us on our social media channels or our website to get the information they need to apply.
And you know, it's going to take a little time. It's a new thing for us with a new system. And hopefully we, you know, we have a little bit of a grace period to work through some of the, some of the, you know, bells and whistles of our shareholder portal. But ultimately, our goal is to enroll all of our descendants in the months and even years ahead, especially in anticipation of that planned June of 2026 descendant dividend, which would be the first time BBNC would pay a dividend specific to this class of stocks. We're excited for all of that.
