An age back when Dunkelzahn's Will came out several of the people that sent back the voting slips for the 2057 election got a mention in the will under their real names for one of the token bequests. They also got some other freebies and one person, I want to say that it was Fortune but I can't remember for sure, got a certificate for one share of Saeder-Krupp signed by Lofwyr (well Mike Mulvihill signed it as Lofwyr) I believe. Which gave me an idea. So supposing by some means that we'll not bother getting into a single share of Saeder-Krupp stock, or a long lost share from one of the major corporations that became Saeder-Krupp and was long ago subsumed into it surfaces, gets legally outside the corportion somehow and owned by someone other than Lofwyr. We'll assume that for the purposes of voting control of the corporation and dividends that it's negligable but it's still a legitimate share.

Since I know fairly little about these types of things what would it allow you do or know about the corporation? Does it being a private corporation or a German one change anything? And what do people think might be the effects if this share were to get out there and then various people were to hear that it was floating around out there? Well aside from absolute chaos.

It's more a collectible than anything else. Trying to pull something with it will get you disowned for a standard rate.

Or invited to dinner with Lofwyr.

Possibly AS dinner.

As a certified Saeder-Krupp shareholder, you'd probably be privvy to some of the corp's performance reports.
And most likely the piqued interest of a certain great western...

Minority shareholder lawsuits! Injunctions! Dividend payments!

If it was legitimate? Probably dead. SK being a 100% privately owned corporation has 0 shares issued. If it was a legal share from after it went private again, it would make you a 50% owner in SK. In other words it would make you dinner.

I did indeed receive a mention in the Will, and part of the prize was a share certificate, but not for Saeder Krupp (that was someone else, as all the shares were different, as far as I know). My share certificate was for the Atlantean Foundation, which I find strangely fitting.

Who the heck pays dividends any more?

Actually, at least in American law, the difference between a private corporation and a public corporation is NOT whether or not they have shares of stock.
That is the difference between a sole proprietorship, a partnership, and a corporation. If you want something incorporated, there has to be stock. That is (simplified) how you tell Inc. (or Corp.) from other things. (LLCs make this more complicated, but don't change the basic idea.) Now, SK may be a sole propietorship. But if it is a private corporation, that merely means that the shares are not listed on the public market, and there are restirctions on how they may be transfered. In many cases, any transfer except to immediate family in a will reuires the consent of the board of directors of the corporation.

(Yes, I probably know too much about how corporations really work for my own good. Particularly considering I am neither a lawyer not an accountant.)

Yours,
Joel

That's what I thought, whilst they're not traded publically on a stock they'd still need to issue to the shareholders a legal minimum number of shares. Although I've got no idea of what the rule is in Germany.

I wonder how much a Mr. J. Spinrad of Monaco, or indeed any number of AAA or AA corporations, might be willing to pay for something like this.

Thanks for all the detail, I am sure it helped some others out. The thing is my assumption is based off the fact that Lofwyr owns 100%, which by definition would make it a sole proprietorship. Since it is a corporation it would most likely be an S Corporation, which has no rules governing actual number of shares, merely the number of shareholders (which I believe is under 100 with no minimum). I am sure none of this matters in the sixth world, though a bunch of mystery shares might be a good plot device for setting off a corporate war, or power struggle within an individual corp. Either way it would make the owners life interesting to say the least.

It isn't 100% anymore.

BBB, Page 43: "The great dragon owns nearly 100% of this German-based megacorp"



People who like making money. If Lofwyr wants to get money from his 99.whatever % shares he needs to pay dividends. He gets 99.whatever % of those dividends, but as a shareholder you get a little slice of the pie too.


Being a legal shareholder would entitle you to information. Any shareholder, as an investor, has the right to know how the corporation is managing their investment. That means they have a right to demand access to various documentation, as well as bringing in outside advisors and investigators to determine how responsibly the corporation is handling their money.

A legal shareholder can attend any shareholder's meeting. Their vote counts for nothing, because Lofwyr has the controlling vote, but he has to call the meetings in order to exercise that vote, and that means that you get to attend, or see the minutes, and hear in full detail what is being voted on, and the reasons for and against.


Remember that Lofwyr is just one dragon, and just one corp. He has to appear to play ball like everyone else, because the corporate court is nine other corps, and he still can't ignore that.

I hold stock in one of the major oil companies. Every year I get a copy of the annual report and an invitation to the share holder's meeting. Also in the same envelope is a proxy card that allows me to instruct someone else to vote my interests in my absence - let's assume for the sake of simplicity that they actually do as I ask. Attached to said proxy is the recommendation of the board of directors. The last go round, There were 9 shareholder proposed changes to the way the company does business. I didn't particularly care for the board's recommendations - "Board advises you to vote no." - and voted yes for 7 of the 9 choices. However, none passed. Simply put my few shares are not enough to matter.

In fact, John D. Rockefeller's grandkids tried some similar proposals with Exxon last month. Despite the fact that grandpa started the company, they no longer have enough stock to control the vote.

By the way, a "private" corporation does NOT split evenly with a single outstanding share that was "missed". That outstanding share just means the individual has a very small stake in a private corporation. Lofwyr might even invite you to dinner as a form of amusement - more of a novelty than anything else.

The minority of shares that "Golden Snoot" (As one person called him) doesn't have are probably lost in someone's safety deposit box or under a bed somewhere. He bought up all that could be found.

"Bought" being a euphanism for "Aquired".

Ok just to step in here, since I do this crap in the real world, this covers a lot, so did joel and naysayer.
a sinlge share entitles you to a single vote on proxy's or putting osmeone on the board. By comparrison, some one with 10 shares, has 10 yotes. someone with 150 shares has 150 votes etc. So you have no real influence on a magacorp.
BUT it does give you an in to the corp. if there is a shareholder meeting, you have the right to attend. That does mean you will be in close quarters to the chairman. Think the "greed is good" speach in the movie Wall Street. It give You the right to regularly receive annual and semi annual reports on how the corp is doing and these reports must be accurate. You cannot lie in them. Now a significant change in policy or direction MUST be reported but you do not have to give all the facts. Of course there are secrets.

For example the mutual fund company I work for will only release the companies we hold a few months out. We want you to buy our product and not just reproduce what the fund managers produce by following their lead. You call up tomorrow and ask what we hold as of last friday-too bad "we do not discuss current investments" and i don't care if you've got $100,000 that is propriatar information of the company and we do not share it. SEC audits make sure the numbers match up but if you'd like we can tell you what we held as of the end of January. Recently a broker said he was pulling $14 million out because I wouldn't tell him what we were currently holding. I held firm. He pulled the money and my boss said I did the right thing.

But there was a proxy on the firm recently, voting for the board of directors and a changein the direction of one of the funds. All those details, in highly technical jargon, has to be sent out to all share holders. That means holding a share you're getting that stuf and calling for a vote on the board, the members have to include a bio, to explain why you might want to vote for them.

YThere are usually dividends and capital gains. Some companys WANT to produce these, lots of bonds and stuff and it provides a nice revenue for retirees. Others have just equity and only have gains if they sell something. This could happen with SK-even if they only sell one subsidary to another this can result in a cap gain and change in the report.
only pennies per share but it's information.

Lastly-as was pointed out, you just hit the radar. "who is this guy?" Like most gifts from a dragon it's double edghed, but you're suddenly in play. Heck even if you live in a card board box or sling spuds as a line chef and you think the most exciting thing that ever happened was getting your hand burned in the frierlator, people will now be asking what's so special about you that a great dragon now remembers you?

Assuming Lowfyr has more than 50% of the total shares then hejust cashes his dividen'd probably not be bother if Joe Average has a single share _provided_ Joe Average doesn't cause problems. If Joe just cashes his dividend cheque, doesn't try to aquire too much inside information (equivalent of the annual report wouldn't be an issue, trying to find out location of all company facilities would) etc. then Lowfyr wouldn't bother you - he has no need to, and if he did bother you its far more likely to cause him problems (in terms of bad press rather than anything Joe can do) in the long term. Of course if Joe wanted to sell his share Lowfyr would snap it up.

Kithran

this reminds me of a episode of mnemosyne where one of the main characters owns a single stock in the corp that creates the major computer security packages. this to get inside info about those packages.

like i said, just owning stock doesn't give you insite to company secrets. invoting for the board you are trusting them to run the show. if you don't like what they are doing you can try to get osmeone else elected or sell your share.

But the reports do give a few ideas of what's going on. Nothing secret, no, but knowing that Ares is preparing to do a major advertisement blitz is a good reason to either do runs, or not do runs, on them.

heh, one never know what some dumb corp would put in a internal report

but then, its a anime, so its more dramatic or humor reasons then logic that something like that was put in there...

YOU want to tell the chairman of SK he's 'some dumb corp'? remember you are tasty and go well with katsup

heh, SK may never do much a thing as i suspect every damn report made "public" is personally read and re-read by old scaly himself to make sure they are worded exactly right...

but with laws changing between vote and final writeup thanks to lowly assistants getting the job of doing the writing, i dont see how there could not be some info slipped into some report or other that should not have been there...

the vote is based on the final report. changes made afterward or in documents not presented do not count. the trick is to write them in such dense jargon that people give up trying to read it.

And that assumes he even writes it in a language known to modern metahumans.

note, what i wote about was someone that cracked into system defended by the products of the corp. and used those reports as another source of info about what to expect...

And for your reading assignment, dig up your old copy of Corporate Shadowfiles, page 24. It goes over this stuff in some pretty good detail. It's a good read too and helpful for a layman to understand a little of the corp dominated world we live in today.

Quite true, very good read. One of the books i got my mate to return to me, when he visited from SA.

There is no obligation to do any sort of financial reporting - look at what companies on the pink sheets have to provide in terms of disclosure. Most of that stuff is a condition of being listed on a stock exchange, which SK might not be.

but failing to explain/display some numbers is going to discourage people, 'what's he hiding?'

Except that I don't think he cares what people think he's hiding. For public companies that's a consideration when they decide what information to release, but S-K isn't a public company.

I second the mention of Shadowfiles. Some parts of it are like a stock primer with shadowtalk, which is more awesome than it sounds.

He might not care what Joe Public thinks but take it up a notch. If they think he's in trouble a corp might heistate to go into business with him and before you say he could buy the corps he wants, sure but it's cheaper just to do business with them when he needs them-renting space instead of buying a facility- but if they think he's low on funds, they might want a bigger deposit. just as an example

While in broad terms thats right, at the end of the day a fully itemised accounting isn't what they're aiming to put out. Expect reports with slightly less depth than government spending reports to be available.

Sure, but that means he can annouce whatever numbers he feels like. Look at what big 4 companies annouce to the world today. They give you a revenue figure, and they'll also, if you press and are important, provide you with a 'banking referee' who will be the local partnerships in country client manager, and all they'll say is that "PWC is indeed solvent and making money"

You don't see people being reluctant to go into business with the big 4 accounting firms.

Yeah, but there use to be 5 accounting firms.

Lehman Brothers took a bad hit this week based on reports.

There used to be 10. It's a sector with a lot of consolidation. I mean heck that almost makes my point. The big 4 disclose virtually nothing, have been known to explode without warning, and people still do business with them.

Arn't the Lehman brothers publicly traded and thus have full SEC disclosure?

Pepole do business with them because there's little enough choices but when it went from 5 to 4 it was not consolidation it was a collapse.

another great example of cooking the books? Eron. Their reports did reveal it all, until audits andfate showed that the subsidiaries they were dealing with didn't exist-and please don't ask for an explanation of the mark to market acocunting system,

Yeah, your choice if you refuse to do business with S-K is to do business with...like, Ares or Mitushama or someone. Who likely provide the same lack of useful information to their shareholders. That's the problem with oligopolies. They don't have to provide anything in particular unless the other ones also do it.

When I think of it, other megas might pay better dividends, or any other kinds of perks, since they want to please stockholders instead of making them go away. But they don't have any more interest in giving them any power than S-K does.

I recall reading something about some major enviromental groups owning shares in oil and chemical companies just so they can send representatives undercover to their shareholder meetings and to gather information quietly and legitimately.

I know, thats why I said 'explode without warning' That and you missed that while 1 of them was a collapse, the disappearance of the other 5 was consolidation.

The intresting thing is that in the SR enviroment, no firm can ever have full disclosure, because they all run illegal black ops programs, thus the auditors cannot sign off on their accounts.