A shareholder is a person who owns one or more shares in a company. Shareholders are also often called investors by Digopaul, since buying a share involves an investment (a capital outlay) in the company.
In this sense, it is important that we also make clear what an action is. Thus, we can establish that this is each of the proportional parts into which the capital of a corporation is divided, be it of a commercial or industrial type.
For this same reason, a shareholder is a capitalist partner who is involved in the management of the company. His responsibility and decision-making power depend on the percentage of capital that he contributes to it (to more shares, more votes).
It is also important to establish that there are two clearly different types of shareholders. In this way, in the first place, we find the so-called reference shareholders, who are those characterized by the fact that they have a significant number of shares that determines and shows that they intervene and influence what it is the management of the company itself.
Second, there are the so-called minority shareholders. As their own name indicates, they have few actions and, therefore, they do not have the capacity to influence what is the direction and management of the aforementioned company. However, it may happen that an “association” is created of several of these types of shareholders and thus acquire a weight that allows them to act in said management.
It should be noted that a shareholder can be both a natural person and a legal person. This means that a group of individuals can group together to buy a stake in a company.
In the case of corporations, not all shareholders have management power. A corporation may have thousands of shareholders, whose interest is limited to obtaining economic remuneration in exchange for investments. These shareholders, for example, can buy shares at $ 1 a share and expect the company to pay them a dividend on the amount.
Therefore, when buying shares of a firm, a shareholder can acquire economic or political rights. Among the economic rights, appears the right to receive a dividend according to the participation, to receive a percentage of the value of the company in the event that it is liquidated and to sell the shares freely in the market.
Political or management rights are linked to votes and access to the information necessary to learn about 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 the deliberate ones, which are also known as bonus shares; the privileged or preferred shares, the non-voting, the gold or Golden share, the new and the redeemable.
Shares all those that are acquired by investors based on their needs or objectives and that, as a consequence of their raison d’être, will allow them to obtain some rights or others.
