Ann: Change in substantial holding, page-16

Custodians

It is in fact the same four names as the top four shareholders in each of the four banks—but it’s not each other. According to the big four’s annual reports for 2013, here’s who owns ordinary shares:

HSBC Custody Nominees (Australia) Limited: 16.91% of Westpac; 16.83% of NAB; 18.48% of ANZ; 14.80% of CBA

JP Morgan Nominees Australia Ltd: 12.75% of Westpac; 12.03% of NAB; 14.40% of ANZ; 11.57% of CBA

National Nominees Limited: 9.93% of Westpac, 10.14% of NAB; 11.76% of ANZ; 8.5% of CBA

Citicorp Nominees Pty Limited: 4.94% of Westpac; 4% of NAB; 4.15% of ANZ; 4.47% of CBA

'Custodians’, by definition, hold customers’ securities for safekeeping, in addition to offering other services such as account administration and collection of dividends and interest payments, for a fee. They are not active participants in decision-making. It would be wrong to imply that by having a 17% stake in Westpac, for example, HSBC also has 17% of the vote: as a custodian, HSBC only processes the proxy votes of the customers for whom it holds the shares—and these customers could be large sovereign wealth funds, or a board member of Westpac, or a family-owned business in Sydney. Discrepancies in proxy voting do occur, and many uneducated investors aren’t even aware they can cast votes. But in principle, HSBC, in a custodian role, acts only as the messenger, not the decision-maker.

As a wholly owned subsidiary of HSBC Bank Australia Limited, the custody nominees business held more than $700 billion in assets. It is not only in the big four. The sheer size of its investment capital means that it frequently shows up among the top 5 shareholders for a large number of Australian companies. In fact, HSBC, JP Morgan, National Nominees and Citicorp all 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.

From: https://www.creditcardcompare.com.au/blog/big-four-ownership/