OMAHA — Berkshire Hathaway shareholders likely won’t get to vote whether to split the company’s Class A stock, which sells for more than $138,000, at this year’s annual meeting in May.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has given Warren Buffett’s company permission to leave a shareholder proposal for a stock split off its proxy statement because the proposal calls for adjusting the value of Class A shares to a specific value. That’s according to letters an SEC lawyer exchanged with Berkshire officials.

But even if such a proposal were to go to shareholders, it would likely face opposition from Buffett, who has never split Berkshire’s stock since he took control of the textile firm in the 1960s. Buffett holds about 31 percent of Berkshire’s stock.

The Berkshire shareholder who proposed the stock split, Robert Zelin Sr., said Tuesday that he didn't want to discuss the proposal, which he considers ”dead for this year.”

In his letter, Zelin suggested that Berkshire should split its Class A shares to make their value fall between $10,000 and $30,000, so the shares would be more affordable and liquid.

ES&S to buy another vote machine maker

OMAHA  — Voting machine maker Election Systems & Software will acquire another company that makes machines that help voters with disabilities mark their own ballots.

ES&S already sold the voting terminal for the disabled that Automark Technical Systems makes, so officials with both companies said combining operations made sense.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. ES&S is based in Omaha. Automark is based in Chicago.

ATS President Gene Cummings says he believes ES&S will be able to expand sales of the voting machine for the disabled because it has a larger sales network.

ES&S will continue providing service to customers that already bought the specialized voting machines.

EBay to cut fees in  effort to boost listings

SAN FRANCISCO — EBay Inc. said Tuesday it will cut by up to 50 percent the fees it charges sellers to list their goods online, in an effort to boost listings and keep pace with other burgeoning e-commerce sites.

To balance the fee cut, the company plans to increase its commission on items that do sell — a method eBay says sellers prefer because it lowers their risk if items do not sell.

EBay will also increase fees on some items, including auctioned goods selling for less than $25. EBay’s fee for those transactions will rise 67 percent, to 8.75 percent of the final sale price.

Incoming Chief Executive John Donahoe told a gathering of 200 of eBay’s top North American sellers in Washington that a majority of sellers will see their fees go down, and that the new fee structure is going to be driven by the success of sellers.

As part of the changes, photo fees also will disappear. The fees were considered a deterrent to sellers posting pictures of their goods, a feature buyers have come to expect on e-commerce sites.

The new fee structure goes into effect Feb. 20 in the United States. More pricing changes are coming shortly in Britain and Germany.

— From wire reports