The recent 18% gain must have brightened CEO Tomohiro Higuchi's week, Bank of Innovation,Inc.'s (TSE:4393) most bullish insider

Key Insights

• Insiders appear to have a vested interest in Bank of InnovationInc's growth, as seen by their sizeable ownership
• 51% of the business is held by the top 2 shareholders
• Using data from company's past performance alongside ownership research, one can better assess the future performance of a company

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If you want to know who really controls Bank of Innovation,Inc. (TSE:4393), then you'll have to look at the makeup of its share registry. And the group that holds the biggest piece of the pie are individual insiders with 54% ownership. Put another way, the group faces the maximum upside potential (or downside risk).

As a result, insiders were the biggest beneficiaries of last week’s 18% gain.

In the chart below, we zoom in on the different ownership groups of Bank of InnovationInc.

See our latest analysis for Bank of InnovationInc

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Bank of InnovationInc?

Many institutions measure their performance against an index that approximates the local market. So they usually pay more attention to companies that are included in major indices.

We can see that Bank of InnovationInc does have institutional investors; and they hold a good portion of the company's stock. This implies the analysts working for those institutions have looked at the stock and they like it. But just like anyone else, they could be wrong. It is not uncommon to see a big share price drop if two large institutional investors try to sell out of a stock at the same time. So it is worth checking the past earnings trajectory of Bank of InnovationInc, (below). Of course, keep in mind that there are other factors to consider, too.

Hedge funds don't have many shares in Bank of InnovationInc. Looking at our data, we can see that the largest shareholder is the CEO Tomohiro Higuchi with 44% of shares outstanding. Meanwhile, the second and third largest shareholders, hold 7.0% and 5.0%, of the shares outstanding, respectively. Interestingly, the second-largest shareholder, Daisuke Tanaka is also Head of Human Resources, again, pointing towards strong insider ownership amongst the company's top shareholders.

After doing some more digging, we found that the top 2 shareholders collectively control more than half of the company's shares, implying that they have considerable power to influence the company's decisions.

While it makes sense to study institutional ownership data for a company, it also makes sense to study analyst sentiments to know which way the wind is blowing. As far as we can tell there isn't analyst coverage of the company, so it is probably flying under the radar.

Insider Ownership Of Bank of InnovationInc

The definition of company insiders can be subjective and does vary between jurisdictions. Our data reflects individual insiders, capturing board members at the very least. The company management answer to the board and the latter should represent the interests of shareholders. Notably, sometimes top-level managers are on the board themselves.

I generally consider insider ownership to be a good thing. However, on some occasions it makes it more difficult for other shareholders to hold the board accountable for decisions.

It seems that insiders own more than half the Bank of Innovation,Inc. stock. This gives them a lot of power. That means they own JP¥23b worth of shares in the JP¥42b company. That's quite meaningful. Most would argue this is a positive, showing strong alignment with shareholders. You can click here to see if those insiders have been buying or selling.

General Public Ownership

The general public-- including retail investors -- own 36% stake in the company, and hence can't easily be ignored. While this size of ownership may not be enough to sway a policy decision in their favour, they can still make a collective impact on company policies.

Next Steps:

I find it very interesting to look at who exactly owns a company. But to truly gain insight, we need to consider other information, too. To that end, you should be aware of the 1 warning sign we've spotted with Bank of InnovationInc .

If you would prefer check out another company -- one with potentially superior financials -- then do not miss this free list of interesting companies, backed by strong financial data.

NB: Figures in this article are calculated using data from the last twelve months, which refer to the 12-month period ending on the last date of the month the financial statement is dated. This may not be consistent with full year annual report figures.

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This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.