Reading about the recent legal action that certain hedge funds are attempting against Porsche, I did a little reading around the history of the subject. One of interesting view was from a German politician who drew a parallel between hedge funds and a swarm of locusts, descending on their target and stripping it of all value. Those who share this view will doubtless revel in the gracefulness with which Porsche duped the hedge funds into huge losses on their VW short positions.
However, the idea that investors may simply be in to asset strip a company, or otherwise use it as a vehicle for abuse, made me question the motives behind shareholders of HBOS and RBS (among others), leading me to ask who these shareholders are. Well, Standard Life Investments and Santander feature prominently on RBS's shareholder register. But one of the biggest shareholders in HBOS was a company I'd never even heard of. Capital Group Companies. They're quite secretive, and encourage those who deal with them to act similarly. I love a bit of intrigue.
Here's who they owned, and at what percentage, around June 2005 (taken from this Times Online article)...
- AstraZeneca (13.10)
- Kingfisher (10.49)
- Reed Elsevier (10.08)
- Scot Power (7.99)
- Vodafone (7.95)
- Nat Grid Transco (6.97)
- Lloyds TSB (6.04)
- 02 (5.25)
- M&S (5.02)
- Unilever (4.97)
- Rio Tinto (4.95)
- Royal Dutch Shell (4.64)
- Stand Chart (4.22)
- Diageo (4.09)
- HBOS (3.97)
- RBS (3.00)
- BHP Billiton (3.00)
- HSBC (2.97)
- BG (2.84)
- Tesco (1.42)
This American giant, Capital Group Companies is "the single largest shareholder in AstraZeneca, Vodafone, Shell, Lloyds TSB, HBOS, Diageo, 02 and half a dozen other FTSE 100 giants".
This has got to be worth a longer look!