ABSTRACT
Inspection of ownership data reveals that the concentration of equity ownership in U.S. corporations varies widely. For a sample of 511 large U.S. corporations, Table 31.1 lists the distribution of three measures of ownership concentration: the percentage of a fi rm’s outstanding common equity owned by the fi ve largest shareholders (A5), the percentage of shares owned by the 20 largest shareholders (A20), and an approximation of a Herfi ndahl measure of ownership concentration (AH). This sample and these data will be described more fully later in the paper. We simply note here the variation in ownership concentration. The value of A5 ranges from 1.27 to 87.14 around a mean value of 24.81. Similar variation is found in the values of A20 and AH: A20 ranges from 1.27 to 91.54 and AH ranges from 0.69 to 4,952.38. The corresponding average values of these two variables are 37.66 and 402.75, respectively.
