Shareholder rights? Good question sushi1. The good news is that one can walk into a Computershare office (or that of whoever handles the company's register. It can be the company itself) and peruse a hard copy of a share register for nothing.
From then on it is all hard and expensive yakka. One can buy a copy at some arbitrary and exhorbitant price determined by the toss of a coin between the company and Computershare. As far as I know there is no electronic version; well there weren't for the two companies I went through the rigmarole for.
The register records all holders in alphabetical order of surname, and their address. That's where there are surnames; there are so many 'def nominees' (under d), etc.
There is no obligation for companies to issue top twenty lists. It only has to announce to the ASX whenever a director or a significant shareholder holding over 5% of the stock trades.
The Computershare list is current on the day of the printout but that is out of date the next day.
It is high time share registries were obliged to supply an electronic version which could be sorted according to the interests of the researcher. No doubt media and brokers have them. I have no idea if they generate their own software or if it comes from the ASX at a price or free because they are members of the 'Club'. It was certainly not available to me since I asked.
