All Ford is doing is splitting ownership between two classes of financial investors. The company is otherwise structurally no different from any other as between the relationship between owners and everyone else aka "costs".

The difference is that the "Capital Partnership" variant of LLC's and LLP's brings the investors and users of investment on the same side.

The "Principal/Agency" problem of "the Corporation" - which requires the whole panoply of Company Law, Sarbox and all the rest - simply does not exist in this model.

If you need any evidence of the attractiveness of such a structure to investors you only need to look at the phenomenal growth in Canadian Income Trusts, which now extend to virtually the entire Canadian capital market.

This occurred despite the tax issues, management issues (an entrepreneurial trust is an oxymoron) and the complexity and costs of trusts (which is why accountants and lawyers love them).

Investors demonstrably like to share the Gross revenues with the  management.

Would you rather drink the water before it goes into the bath, or after it comes out of the plug-hole?

"The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson