The higher share price serves as a mechanism to stabilize the share prices as well. I have a few friends who disdain at the idea of selling even a single share because they don't want to bother converting it to B shares and/or don't want to trigger a tax on the capital gain.
Well, when they bought it, the share price was sub $100k. Some even lower. The B shares didn't exist before either (pre 1996), so some of these are legacy shares.
