Is it a matter of public record on who owns shares of a company stock? How can I find this out?
I have a feeling my boss owns stock in a company and is making deals to do business with this company in her current position so that the stock will go up. Isn’t this illegal? Can I find out if she really owns shares in this company? Is that public knowledge and if so, how can I get that information.
Tags: Company Stock, Current Position, Public Knowledge, Public Record, Shares
June 9th, 2009 at 5:28 pm
You probably cannot find this out. Shareholder lists are not public information, but can be made available to existing shareholders. However, a shareholder needs to have a reason, such as a proxy fight, in order to get them. To do that, you need to put up an enormous amount of money and have a reason to try and take over a company.
It is perfectly legal for someone to do business with a firm they also own and of course they would want the price to go up. They would be nuts to want it to go down.
It could potentially be unethical, but it certainly isn’t illegal. Now it could violate her contractual obligations to her employer, but only if the employer has such a policy, it is part of her contract and is materially detrimental to the firm.
This is how capitalism works, everyone works in their own self interest and as a result we have gone from a near starvation economy to an economy where very few people farm or provide basic services and mostly live in luxury.
It sounds more like you either are jealous, a pharisee and feel a rule is being broken, or have some personal moral issue in a morality owned by you that other people don’t share but you feel they should.
June 11th, 2009 at 10:23 am
The real questions here are is stock in this company publicly traded, e.g. traded to anyone via an exchange and is your boss an officer of the comapny? if the answer to both questions is yes then your boss is prohibited from using “insider” information to enhance her personal finances.
However, I would hope that your boss “is making deals…..so the stock will go up. That’s the way a successful manager/business operates.