What Type Of Shareholders Own The Most Number of AngloGold Ashanti Limited (JSE:ANG) Shares?

Every investor in AngloGold Ashanti Limited (JSE:ANG) should be aware of the most powerful shareholder groups. Large companies usually have institutions as shareholders, and we usually see insiders owning shares in smaller companies. Companies that have been privatized tend to have low insider ownership.

AngloGold Ashanti is a pretty big company. It has a market capitalization of R147b. Normally institutions would own a significant portion of a company this size. In the chart below, we can see that institutions own shares in the company. Let's take a closer look to see what the different types of shareholders can tell us about AngloGold Ashanti.

Check out our latest analysis for AngloGold Ashanti

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About AngloGold Ashanti?

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.

As you can see, institutional investors have a fair amount of stake in AngloGold Ashanti. This suggests some credibility amongst professional investors. But we can't rely on that fact alone since institutions make bad investments sometimes, just like everyone does. When multiple institutions own a stock, there's always a risk that they are in a 'crowded trade'. When such a trade goes wrong, multiple parties may compete to sell stock fast. This risk is higher in a company without a history of growth. You can see AngloGold Ashanti's historic earnings and revenue below, but keep in mind there's always more to the story.

Institutional investors own over 50% of the company, so together than can probably strongly influence board decisions. Hedge funds don't have many shares in AngloGold Ashanti. Looking at our data, we can see that the largest shareholder is Public Investment Corporation Limited with 10% of shares outstanding. With 10% and 4.2% of the shares outstanding respectively, Van Eck Associates Corporation and BlackRock, Inc. are the second and third largest shareholders.

A closer look at our ownership figures suggests that the top 22 shareholders have a combined ownership of 50% implying that no single shareholder has a majority.

While studying institutional ownership for a company can add value to your research, it is also a good practice to research analyst recommendations to get a deeper understand of a stock's expected performance. There are plenty of analysts covering the stock, so it might be worth seeing what they are forecasting, too.

Insider Ownership Of AngloGold Ashanti

The definition of an insider can differ slightly between different countries, but members of the board of directors always count. 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.

Most consider insider ownership a positive because it can indicate the board is well aligned with other shareholders. However, on some occasions too much power is concentrated within this group.

Our information suggests that AngloGold Ashanti Limited insiders own under 1% of the company. Being so large, we would not expect insiders to own a large proportion of the stock. Collectively, they own R650m of stock. Arguably recent buying and selling is just as important to consider. You can click here to see if insiders have been buying or selling.

General Public Ownership

The general public, with a 23% stake in the company, will not easily be ignored. While this group can't necessarily call the shots, it can certainly have a real influence on how the company is run.

Next Steps:

It's always worth thinking about the different groups who own shares in a company. But to understand AngloGold Ashanti better, we need to consider many other factors. For example, we've discovered 2 warning signs for AngloGold Ashanti that you should be aware of before investing here.

If you would prefer discover what analysts are predicting in terms of future growth, do not miss this free report on analyst forecasts.

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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