Shareholder concentration and control in Australia

Abstract

ABSTRACT There is ongoing interest in understanding share ownership and control dynamics in publicly listed companies, given the governance and regulatory implications arising therefrom. This article presents a new empirical analysis of shareholder data, focusing on the largest 50 publicly listed companies in Australia, filling a striking gap in the existing literature. Specifically, the following issues are investigated within each company: 1. The level of institutional ownership within the largest 20 registered shareholders; 2. The percentage of issued capital owned by the largest three registered shareholders; 3. The control of that ownership, to determine the extent to which ownership and control diverge; and 4. Substantial shareholding information is collected and analysed, in order to reduce the information gap which exists between ownership and control, and to provide a more complete picture of shareholding patterns. Several explanatory factors behind the identified landscape and the implications arising from the findings are then discussed.