this could be happening to red ?, page-6

Hi Beatle....most institutions would use a nominee company to hold their shares. It is not only because they would sometimes want to keep their identity a secret but it is mostly to attend to the collection of dividends, voting on company proposals etc, etc. The company can legally discover who is the beneficial owner of a nominee holding so in my mind, the use of custodians is usuallly for the convenience of having someone else deal with the day to day management of holding stock. However, these custodians can and will lend stock to other institutions, for a fee. Stock lending can be a highly lucrative business for these departments within banks that run custodial accounts.