Analysis of Listed Companies' Share Ownership Structures and Patterns of Tender Offers

Abstract

Understanding of the entire picture of the share ownership structure of listed companies in each country in general will provide an important perspective for analyzing the present takeover rules in that country, and also for considering appropriate regimes for takeover rules for the future. This perspective is absolutely necessary from the standpoint of policymaking. Based on the awareness of the issue as mentioned above, I made an analysis of (i) the distribution of the shareholding ratios of the largest shareholders (Table 1), and (ii) the average shareholding ratios of the largest shareholders/second to tenth-ranked shareholders (Table 2) based on the latest data available as of April 30, 2013, so as to study the share ownership structure of listed companies in five countries, i.e. Japan, the U.S., the U.K., Germany and France. I also made an analysis of selected cases of tender offers of each country. The divergence between the mandatory offer rules and the patterns of tender offer models in the U.K., Germany and France, provides an important insight for legislative policies, as it suggests the following facts, in addition to the basic patterns of different share ownership structure models and tender offers: (i) even the same rules function differently depending on differences in the share ownership structure; and (ii) even a slight difference in the related regulations makes the rules function differently, if the share ownership structure is different.