ABSTRACT
Since the mid-1970s there has been a shareholder revolution that has transferred the ownership of corporate equities from individuals to institutional investors. Beginning first in the U.S., the UK and other common law jurisdictions, this transformation is increasingly global in scope. Even in countries that traditionally have not had significant individual investment in publicly traded equities (and in some cases, low equity ownership by any entity) we have witnessed the growth of institutional ownership. Not only in geographic scope have we witnessed institutional ownership growth, but there also has been a growth in investment in asset classes such as bonds, hedge funds, real estate, commodities of various types and private equity.
