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Comment by ladon86 | Hacker News Reader

Right, there’s no lower limit at all based on this language - it could be a single share.

I mean… as far as I can tell, the definition is so broad and vague that it would even cover a Chinese firm holding a US public stock.

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Holding a minority of common stock does not give you the power to “determine, direct, or decide important matters” so no, it would not cover that.

Actually even minor stock holders can get to vote to decide important matters, so yes, it would cover that.

Further than that, many decisions are probably in practice made by minor stockholders as big pension funds, bank run index funds, etc have neither the will nor expertise to get their hands dirty.

This is why corporate raiders can gut companies by buying into them, replacing boards and/or force them to huge divestments, loans and finally dividends, and then when finished leave a husk of the company back to index and pension funds that just buys mindlessly to retain their index balance (even if the company has no real long term future).

As of 2021 institutional investors avoid getting their hands dirty by only voting about ninety percent of their shares. Individual investors show their “expertise” by voting a bit under thirty percent of their shares.

Say, when the corporate raiders buy a bunch of shares, how come the institutional investors still have theirs? That seems odd…

exactly. Or there's a person of slight Chinese origin in your management team.

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