Okay, committing the crime of copying and pasting a link, but some very interesting stats on the major shareholders in AUS:
independentaustralia.net/business/business-display/who-owns-corporate-australia,5033
News to me.... didn't know HSBC and JP Morgan owned large holdings in the majors......
Most of those HSBC and JP Morgan-type shareholders that are listed are not actually on their "own account" but are instead Trustee (or Nominee) entities that are operated by the banks but the beneficiaries of those Trustee/Nominee entities are a multitude of other investors (both corporations and wealthy individuals) so it's not really true to say there are lots of corporate cross-shareholdings. What is true is that it's mostly the same investors investing in all the companies simply 'cos 98% of the wealth is owned by 2% of the population...or whatever the statistic is.
It is interesting when you see who owns who.
The irony of Wesfarmers owning Coles, and Coles are farking the farmers with their $1 milk etc.
The fact it is hard to choose an alternative product as you think it is a different brand but in the end it is the same company.
(This is gonna end up in Heavy Weather with talk about the 5 rich families etc isn't it..)
See the way to play Monopoly is to buy absolutely everything you land on. Mortgage what you own, whatever it takes. But buy everything. It was designed to show how monopolies work, and was a bit of a stab at capitalism (but I'll argue the state can be a monopoly too).
I think the crux of that article was:
Corporation: Noun
An ingenious device for making individual profit without taking individual responsibility.
well.........
Since Australia is an American registered company,
I guess you just look up who the owner of the company is?
stephen
