shareholder

A shareholder is a person who owns one or more shares in a business. Shareholders are also often referred to as investors, since buying a share represents an investment (a capital outlay) in the company.

In this sense, it is important that we also make it clear what an action is. Thus, we can establish that this is each of the proportional parts into which the capital of a public limited company is divided, be it commercial or industrial.

For this same reason, a shareholder is a equity partner who is involved in the management of the company. Your responsibility and decision-making power depends on the percentage of capital you contribute to it (more shares, more votes).

It is also important to establish that there are two clearly differentiated types of shareholders. In this way, in the first place, we find the so-called reference shareholders, which are those who are characterized by the fact that they have a significant number of shares, which is what determines and makes it clear that they intervene and influence what it is the management of the company itself.

Second, there are the so-called minority shareholders. As their name indicates, they have few actions and, therefore, they do not have the capacity to influence the direction and management of the aforementioned company. However, it may happen that an "association" of several of these types of shareholders is created and thus they acquire a weight that allows them to act in that aforementioned management.

It should be noted that a shareholder can be both a Physical person like a legal person. This means that a group of individuals can come together to buy a stake in a company.

In the case of public limited companies, not all shareholders have management power. A corporation can have thousands of shareholders, whose interest is limited to obtaining a financial return in exchange for investments. These shareholders, for example, can buy shares at a dollar a share and expect the company to pay them a dividend about the amount.

Therefore, when buying shares of a firm, a shareholder can acquire economic rights or political rights. Among the economic rights, there is the right to receive a dividend according to the participation, to receive a percentage of the value of the company in case it is liquidated and to sell the shares freely in the market.

Political or management rights are linked to votes and with access to the information necessary to understand business management.

In addition to all the above, we cannot forget that there are different types of actions. Thus, among the most frequent would be deliberate ones, which are also known as bonus shares; privileged or preferred shares, non-voting, gold or Golden share, new and redeemable.

Shares are all those that are acquired by investors based on their needs or objectives and that, as a consequence of their reason for being, will allow them to obtain some rights or others.