In the context of government-owned golden shares, this share is often retained only for some defined period of time to allow a newly privatised company to become accustomed to operating in a public environment, unless ownership of the organisation concerned is deemed to be of ongoing importance to national interests, for example for reasons of national security.
NATS Holdings, the UK's main air navigation service provider, is an example of a company with a golden share.
[1] The term arose in the 1980s when the British government retained golden shares in companies it privatised, an approach later taken in many other European countries, as well as the former Soviet Union.
[citation needed] It was introduced in Russia by a Decree of the President of the Russian Federation (Boris Yeltsin) on November 16, 1992.
The golden share structure of Volkswagen AG and the travails of the German Land (federal state) of Niedersachsen (Lower Saxony) are discussed by Johannes Adolff[11] as well by as Peer Zumbansen and Daniel Saam.