who owns Wesfarmers? Its largest shareholders respectively are HSBC Custody Nominees (Australia) Limited, JP Morgan Nominees Australia Ltd, National Nominees Limited and Citicorp Nominees Pty Limited. Combined, these entities own more the 40 percent of the company.
Looking at company reports, these same four also own up to 40 percent or more of each of the big four banks (which between them hold more than 80 percent of all residential mortgages and domestic deposits). In fact, they are ubiquitous as shareholders in companies across the economy. These “nominees” are set up to manage other people’s investments. But because they are not public companies, there is little available information about who, where and how many investors there are. HSBC Nominees alone manages about $700 billion of investments. As one finance writer noted:
“[A]ll frequently show up together among the top 5 or top 10 shareholders. They simply represent a very large pile of money, all of which has to be parked somewhere … Unfortunately, it is practically impossible to track down the identities of those underlying shareholders through the various financial structures that hold shares for each other and on behalf of each other.”
