Book Review: Disclosure of Corporate Ownership

• Date: 01 June 1976
• Published date: 01 June 1976
• DOI: 10.1177/0003603X7602100208
• Author: Peter C. Dooley
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

BOOK

REVIEWS

Subcommittees on Intergovernmental Relations and on Budg-

eting, Management, and Expenditures of the Committee

on Government Operations of the United States Senate,

Disclosure of Corporate Ownership, Washington, D. C.:

U. S. Government

Printing

Office

(1973), 419 pp.,

$5.60.

Disclosure of Corporate Ownership is a report of the

Senate Committee on Government Operations

that

was pre-

pared

by its Subcommittee on Intergovernmental Relations,

of which Senator Edmund S. Muskie was chairman, and by

its

Subcommittee on Budgeting, Management, and Expendi-

tures, of which Senator Lee Metcalf was chairman.

Part

I,

by

Julius

W. Allen, analyzes the responses to a

letter

of

inquiry

that

Senator Metcalf sent to 324 large corporations

asking for alist of

their

30 largest stockholders.

Part

II,

prepared

by

Professor

Robert M. Soldofsky, presents some

previously unpublished

data

that

were collected

for

the

S.E.C.'s Institutional Investor

Study

and

discusses anumber

of specific abuses

that

may arise from afailure of corpo-

rations to disclose the identities of

their

largest

stockholders.

Part

IlIon

broadcasting,

Part

IV

on electric utilities, and

Appendices Athrough Gcontain a collection of curious and

interesting facts

and

comments on corporate ownership.

Only 89 of the 324 corporations

that

were queried fully

reported

their

30

largest

stockholders;

and

these 89 corpo-

rations disclosed very little about who owned

their

stock,

because most of the

largest

owners of record were reported

to be the nominees of bank

trust

departments, brokerage

houses, and other financial institutions

that

were not the

actual owners. Nominee accounts or

"street

names" have been

used

for

many years dn order to permit institutions to aggre-

gate the transactions of all

their

clients into one or a few

accounts, so

that

the

transfer

of ownership

and

the collection

of income is on a

larger

scale, involves fewer names, and is

more efficient. However, this places the nominee and the in-

stitution between the issuing corporation

and

the actual stock

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