{"id":501,"date":"2010-02-02T05:11:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-02T10:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/2010\/02\/who-owns-monsanto.html"},"modified":"2010-02-02T05:11:00","modified_gmt":"2010-02-02T10:11:00","slug":"who-owns-monsanto","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/2010\/02\/who-owns-monsanto.html","title":{"rendered":"Who Owns Monsanto?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/a>\nThe answer in\n\n1939<\/a>\nturns out to be about the same as in\n2010:<\/a>\nminority shares by its own executives, and the majority by, well:\n
\nLast week’s survey of stockholders\u2014lavish to the point of including pictures of “typical” Monsanto stockholders in the “typical” city of Cincinnati\u2014was frankly designed to prove that Monsanto is not owned or run by any of “America’s 60 Families.”\n

\nOutstanding as of June 1, 1938, were 1,241,816 common shares held by 4,300 men, 4,084 women, 2,708 trusts, groups, institutions. Mr. Queeny holds only 3.4% has beneficial interest in about 4.5% more through relatives and trusts. One officer of the company owns 1.47%, no others own more than .25%.\n

\nThe magazine named as “stockholders, once removed,” students in 42 universities which together own 1% of Monsanto and the 25,000,000 policyholders in 72 insurance companies which together own 3%. Tucked away in a graph was the fact that 81% of the company’s shares is owned in blocks of 101 or more shares ($102-to-$104 a share last week).\n<\/blockquote>\nSo, mostly funds in 1939. And 71 years later, it’s even more so.\n\n\n

\n…like an unruly mob, where the individual is swept up in the anonymity of the numbers, responsibility and conscience is muted when it comes to investments and pension funds. The system of shareholder capitalism, where massive powerful corporations have huge numbers of shareholders, including all kinds of mutual fund holders, capital managers, insurance companies, etc., makes it easy to be anonymous and check ones ethics at the door. Monsanto insiders own less than 10 % of the corporation, the remainder is controlled by money managers and mutual funds.\n<\/blockquote>\nSpecifically, \naccording to Yahoo finance:<\/a>\n
\n\n
% of Shares Held by All Insider and 5% Owners: <\/td>0%<\/td><\/tr>\n
% of Shares Held by Institutional & Mutual Fund Owners: <\/td>81%<\/td><\/tr>\n
% of Float Held by Institutional & Mutual Fund Owners: <\/td>82%<\/td><\/tr>\n
Number of Institutions Holding Shares: <\/td>947<\/td><\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/blockquote>\nInsiders don’t own even a hundredth of a percent of Monsanto stock.\nThe tiny percentages they own amount to sizeable personal wealth,\n$31 million total for CEO Hugh Grant,\nand\n\n$16.11 million per year.<\/a>\n
\nThe 48 year old executive ranks 1 within Chemicals\n<\/blockquote>\nBut Monsanto’s executives are not the recipients of most of the\nappreciation in Monsanto’s stock price.\nWho is?\n

\nTop institutional holders include Barclays, Morgan Stanley, and Janus Capital.\nWell, you’d expect that, right?\nBig capitalists of course want a chunk of\n\nForbes’ Company of the Year<\/a>,\neven if it is the least ethical company in the world<\/a>\naccording to a Covalence survey.\n

\nTop mutual fund holders include Growth Fund of America,\nIvy Asset Strategy Fund,\nand College Retirement Equities Fund.\nHm, the sorts of funds anybody might own, from college students to retirees.\nAnd in even mutual fund with the most Monsanto, you have to dig deep to\nfind it; it’s not in the top 10 of holdings, it accounts for\n0.63% of holdings.<\/a>\nAnd while that is almost a billion dollars worth of stock,\nit’s still a small percentage of the fund.\nLess than the same fund owns of McDonalds and way less than it owns of Microsoft.\n

\nThis isn’t like big media, which is largely controled by five families.\nThis is more like big tobacco or apartheid South Africa.\nLots of funds and institutions hold shares, and a divestiture movement\nmight be quite interesting.\n

\nHm, TIAA-CREF recently sold 10% of the Monsanto shares it owned.<\/a>\nAnd Fidelity Management and Research sold 36% of what it owned.\nPeople can vote when they buy food, by not buying food that has pesticides or growth hormones or antibiotics in it. They can also vote when they invest, by not investing in funds that hold companies that do such things.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The answer in 1939 turns out to be about the same as in 2010: minority shares by its own executives, and the majority by, well: Last week’s survey of stockholders\u2014lavish to the point of including pictures of “typical” Monsanto stockholders in the “typical” city of Cincinnati\u2014was frankly designed to prove that Monsanto is not owned […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[8,40,42,174],"tags":[2762,239,1671,1672,1668,1133,2763,1669,1624,1670,15,620,179,19,1667],"class_list":["post-501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-agrochemicals","category-economy","category-food-and-drink","category-glyphosate","tag-agrochemicals","tag-birth-defects","tag-college-retirement-equities-fund","tag-covalence","tag-fidelity-management-and-research","tag-forbes","tag-glysophate","tag-growth-fund-of-america","tag-hugh-grant","tag-ivy-asset-strategy-fund","tag-monsanto","tag-pesticides","tag-roundup","tag-seeds","tag-tiaa-cref"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Gj0O-85","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}