home › Inheritance and donation › The largest shareholders of apple. Brands. - the year the company was founded

The largest shareholders of apple. Brands. - the year the company was founded

April 1, 2016 marks the 40th anniversary of Apple's founding. RBC recalled 40 interesting facts from the life of the world's main technology company

Start

Unknown founder. In addition to Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, Apple has a third co-founder - Ronald Wayne, a former colleague of Jobs at Atari. He sold a 10 percent stake in the company three months after its inception for $800 and did not own an Apple device until 2011, when he was given an iPad 2 at a conference. Wayne retired after working for lesser-known technology companies and is now in mainly collects.

$800 stake sale document signed by Wozniak, Jobs and Wayne (Photo: Bloomberg)

Devilish amount. The first Apple computer - Apple I - retailed for $666.66 apiece (adjusted for inflation today, this amount would be about $2.8 thousand). The co-founder of the company, Steve Wozniak, later had to explain more than once that he and Steve Jobs did not include any religious background in the price tag, and the “devilish” amount was formed from the cost of the device ($500), the sales margin ($167) and Wozniak’s love for repeating numbers. In 2014, one of the 50 Apple I from the first batch was bought at auction by the Henry Ford Museum for nearly $1 million.

The first Apple I computer (Photo: AP)

Biting logo. Famous Apple logo in 1977, the designer Rob Janoff, at that time the art director of the agency Regis MacKenna, came up with. Having depicted a bitten apple, he decided to play with the term byte (a unit of information and at the same time the verb "bite"). In later interviews, the designer complained that he did not receive a decent, in his opinion, gratitude from Apple for the work done.

First after Ford. Apple's IPO in 1980 was the largest in the US in 24 years since the placement of the auto giant Ford: 4.6 million shares were sold in a few minutes, the company's capitalization reached $1.8 billion, and about 300 people turned into dollar multimillionaires.

Advertising dystopia. At halftime in the 1984 Super Bowl Final, Apple released its most famous commercial ever, 1984, directed by acclaimed filmmaker Ridley Scott. The budget for the 60-second video dystopia amounted to $700,000, which was significant at the time. However, the video paid for itself - it quickly gained cult status, received the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival and collected many other awards, and due to its repeated display on evening TV shows, it brought Apple free airtime. prime time worth $150 million.

Steve Jobs

100 turtlenecks. Mine form style- A black turtleneck, Levis 501 jeans and New Balance sneakers - Steve Jobs created together with Japanese designer Issey Miyake. In the mid-1980s, he supplied the Apple founder with more than a hundred identical turtlenecks. The very idea of Jobs' personal uniform was born from his desire to come up with a universal style for all Apple employees - following the example of the Japanese corporation Sony.

Unceremonious CEO. Steve Jobs went down in history not only as the creator of great technological products, but also as an eccentric and tough manager. The entrepreneur’s biography described an interview scene in which Jobs asked candidates the most offhand questions — like whether they had a sexual experience or whether they used drugs — just to get them out of their comfort zone and see if they could quickly cope with stress.

Steve Jobs, 1993 (Photo: AP)

iPod and bubbles. At a meeting with the developers of the first model of the iPod, Steve Jobs long urged his subordinates to make the prototype device even more compact, but they insisted that they had “reinvented the invention” anyway. Then the founder of Apple suddenly threw the gadget into the aquarium. As several bubbles surfaced, Jobs declared, “See, there’s still empty space inside. Go and make it smaller."

First iPod (center) (Photo: AP)

Jobs effect. Almost 117 times - from $ 3 billion to $ 350 billion - the capitalization of Apple has grown since the return of Steve Jobs to the company in 1997 and until the death of the founder of Apple in October 2011. Revenue for the same period increased more than 15 times - from $7.1 billion to $108.2 billion.

Dollar salary. Since 1997, when Steve Jobs returned to the post of CEO of Apple, he received a symbolic salary of $ 1 a year. This did not prevent the founder of the company from remaining a member of the list of billionaires according to Forbes versions: He owned large stakes in Apple and Disney.

Apple in faces

Calculator for Apple. Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak designed the Apple I in Steve Jobs' garage. To finance the release of the first series of devices, he sold his HP engineering calculator for $500, and before the Apple IPO in 1980, he gave away 800,000 of his shares to other key employees, who, in his opinion, were unfairly bypassed by equity participation.

Steve Wozniak with his invention, next to Jobs, 1976 (Photo: DPA / TACC)

First investor. Apple's first investor was ex-Intel employee Mike Markkula, who in 1976 invested $250,000 in the company and received about 30% of the shares. Already by the time of Apple's IPO in 1980, his share was estimated at more than $ 200 million. Whether Markkula finally left the company's shareholders today is unknown. In various positions, he worked at Apple until 1997 and left the company after returning to the post of CEO of Steve Jobs.

Design chief. Iconic Apple designer Jony Ive has worked on the design of many products before joining the company, from microwave ovens to toothbrushes. One of his first projects in 1989 was the design of a toilet, bidet and sink, but this project by young Quince was not accepted by the customer due to too high a cost. In 1992, Ive joined the Apple team, in 1997 he became senior vice president of industrial design, and in 2015 - the company's director of design.

Designer Jony Ive and engineer John Rubinstein with the first iMacs, 1999 (Photo: AP)

Cook Bonuses. More than $64 million worth of Tim Cook's stake, which the Apple CEO can sell since 2016 (since 2011, when Cook took over as CEO, the papers have been under restriction under an agreement with the company). Another similar package will be released from the restriction in 2021 if Cook continues to successfully run the business. The salary and bonuses earned him about $10.3 million more in fiscal 2015.

Tim Cook (Photo: Bloomberg)

growth driver. Corporate raider Carl Icahn has been attacking the market since 2013 with loud statements about the underestimation of Apple shares by investors - according to his latest statement, Apple's capitalization should reach $ 1.4 trillion. He long lobbied to increase the share buyback program from $100 billion to $150 billion, until Apple itself raised the bar to $200 billion.

business icon

On the cache pillow. Apple continues to accumulate an already impressive cash cushion: according to the latest quarterly reports (for October-December 2015), the company has a cash reserve of about $ 216 billion at its disposal. These funds would be enough to buy Uber, Xiaomi, eBay, Twitter, Snapchat, Airbnb, SpaceX and Pinterest combined.

Getting to a trillion. In February 2015, Apple became the first public companies broke through the capitalization bar of $700 billion. In the spring of the same year, the figure at the peak exceeded $764 billion, analysts predicted , that the company will reach the $1 trillion milestone. Since then, Apple’s capitalization, however, has dropped to the range of $500-600 billion, and in early February 2016, Apple even lost the title of the most expensive public company in the world to Alphabet, the new head structure of Google, for a day.

The most profitable. The last three months of 2015 brought Apple a record profit in the history of public companies - $ 18.4 billion, with the iPhone maker breaking its own record a year ago.

Generosity for shareholders. Since 2012, when Apple launched a massive share buyback campaign, the company has spent $153 billion on dividends and share buybacks. The company plans to return $200 billion to shareholders by the end of March 2017.

Long loop. Apple's total debt increased by another $12 billion in February to reach $75 billion. According to Moody's, by the end of 2017, taking into account the company's plans to buy back shares and pay dividends, Apple's debt burden may exceed $100 billion. For comparison: the same indicator Google's parent structure, Alphabet holding, was only $5.2 billion at the end of 2015.

Brand value. According to Interbrand analysts, in 2013 the Apple brand for the first time became the most expensive in the world, ahead of the undisputed leader Coca-Cola. Then its value was $98.3 billion. In the latest Interbrand ranking of 2015, Apple strengthened its leadership. Its brand value has already reached $170.2 billion.

Chinese expansion. In 2015, China overtook Europe to become Apple's second largest market after the US. In the fourth fiscal quarter alone, the company's revenue in China doubled to $12.2 billion. In America and Europe over the same period, revenues grew much more slowly - by 2 and 10%, respectively.

Mobile era

Planet iPhone. Since 2007, Apple has sold 886.6 million iPhones worldwide, roughly one in eight people on the planet. True, Apple's main competitor, South Korean Samsung, shipped the same volume of smartphones to sellers in less than three years.

Enemy partner. Despite competing with Samsung in the smartphone market and numerous patent wars, Apple continues to work closely with the South Korean company in terms of component production: for example, Samsung, at the end of 2015, produced up to 70% of the powerful A9 processors that are used in the sixth generation of the iPhone, and also in the new iPhone SE model.

Google is coming. In 2014, Google's Android devices outnumbered iOS devices for the first time. Android took 44.6% of the market, and Apple's operating system - 44.2%. In March 2015, Android surpassed iOS for the first time in ad revenue as well, accounting for 45.8% of global ad revenue. mobile devices, on iOS - 45.4%.

Queue for 2,000 The release of new flagship iPhones is always a buzz, with shoppers queuing up in front of Apple stores days before release. On the day the iPhone 6 sales began, a record 1,900 people lined up in front of the Apple showroom in New York, and the two lucky ones who were the first sold their seats for $2,500 each.

First iPhone 6 customer

Memoryful Siri. Everything that users say to the virtual assistant Siri, Apple records, analyzes and stores for two years. True, three-quarters of this period, the information is "depersonalized", that is, the data is not tied to specific users.

Apple: offline and online

Company stores. Apple began to develop own network Apple Stores in 2001 from two locations in Virginia and California. Today, the company's branded stores operate in 18 countries, the network has expanded to 463 outlets. And the competition for jobs at the Apple Store in Manhattan in 2009 was stronger than for seats at Harvard: 10,000 candidates applied for 200 seats, that is, Apple had to cut off 98% of applicants. At Harvard that year, 93% of applicants did not get in.

Opening of the first Apple Store in California in 2001 (Photo: Reuters/Pixstream)

Work for millions. Apple estimates that the App Store has created 2.6 million jobs worldwide (1.4 million in the US and China, and 1.2 million in Europe). This number includes application developers and software, entrepreneurs, as well as employees of IT-related areas.

The office is like a spaceship. By 2017, Apple should move to a new headquarters in Cupertino. The $5 billion project was created by Sir Norman Foster's office: a 260,000-sq. m, similar to a spaceship, will accommodate about 13 thousand employees of the company. Around on an area of 71 hectares there will be a whole Apple park.

Apple CEO Tim Cook shows the company's Cupertino headquarters project at a presentation (Photo: AP)

Apple with steering wheel. In September 2015, it became known that Apple was working on creating its own car. The project, codenamed Titan, already has 600 engineers led by the company's chief designer, Jony Ive. The product may be on the market as early as 2019.

Triumph Facebook. The Facebook app is the most downloaded app in the history of the App Store (the top 5 also includes two other apps owned by social network Mark Zuckerberg - Facebook Messenger and Instagram). The top-grossing app in the Apple store is Clash of Clans strategy. The game is free to download and monetized through in-app purchases. The Finnish developer of the best-selling book, Supercell, saw a 30% increase in revenue in 2015 to $2.3 billion.

Technique and innovation

Creating a market. In 2010, Apple was the first of the major technology companies to launch mass production of tablet computers, although the development of such a gadget in different time almost all key market players were engaged. In the same year, Samsung introduced its tablets - and de facto a new market niche was formed in the world, for this IDC analysts even had to introduce the term "tablet computer" into circulation. In 2015, 207 million tablets were sold worldwide, with Apple, at first occupying more than half of the market, reducing its share to a quarter, and Samsung to 14% due to the growth of Amazon and Chinese manufacturers. .

Apple import substitution. In 2012, Apple began moving production of Macbook laptops from China to the US. The company headed for import substitution of its assembly facilities and their return to America. In total, this trend, which was followed by many companies from the United States, in 2014 brought the country more than 60 thousand new jobs.

Competitors behind. Apple introduced its first gadget in the “wearable devices” category in April 2015 - it was the “smart” watch Apple Watch. By the end of the year, the company occupied more than 50% of the global smartwatch market with sales of 11.6 million devices, despite the fact that it was not a market pioneer - Samsung, Sony and other manufacturers began selling Apple Watch analogues for six months - a year before Apple.

Apple Watch (Photo: Bloomberg)

A billion gadgets. In January 2016, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced that the number of actively used devices worldwide for the first time exceeded 1 billion - we are talking about iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, iPod Touch and Apple TV, which at least once in the previous 90 days connected to Apple online services.

Apple against everyone

tax deficit. According to the latest Citizens for Justice and the US Public Interest Research Group study, in 2014 Apple kept offshore more profit than any other American company - $ 181.1 billion - so as not to pay taxes on this money in the United States. Because of this, the US treasury lost $ 59.2 billion in tax revenue. The authorities have repeatedly accused the company of keeping money offshore and evading taxes.

Scandal in China. 14 workers at Foxconn's Chinese factory, where Apple devices were assembled, committed suicide in 2010 due to unbearable working conditions. An audit by Apple itself confirmed that some of its assembly plants in China violated the rules of corporate labor code. In 2014, the company was again accused of violating labor standards in China. In particular, exploitation of child labor and 12-hour shifts were revealed at the Pegatron plant.

Workers at the Foxconn plant, 2010 (Photo: Reuters/Pixstream)

Through the mouth of Snowden. Edward Snowden's revelations affected Apple in 2013: Der Spiegel magazine published a portion of secret NSA documents, from which it followed that US intelligence agencies massively monitor gadget users of leading technology companies, including the iPhone manufacturer.

War with the FBI. More than 5,000 requests from US authorities demanding the disclosure of user personal data were received by Apple in the first half of 2015 (the company's latest public data at the moment). The company's standoff with the US government reached its peak in February 2016, when a California district court ordered Apple to hack the iPhone of terrorist Syed Farouk in accordance with an FBI request. Apple challenged the decision, and at the end of March it turned out that the FBI had gained access to the data without the help of the smartphone manufacturer.

Recently, the world was shocked by sensational news - the capitalization of the Bitten Apple company exceeded $ 700 billion. But that's not all: "The investor and the main shareholder Apple Carl Icahn has valued one share of this company at $216, which is $91 higher than their current value.

Recently, the world was shocked by sensational news - the capitalization of the Bitten Apple company exceeded $ 700 billion.

But that's not all:

"The investor and the main shareholder of Apple, Carl Icahn, estimated the value of one share of this company at $216, which is $91 higher than their current value. According to Icahn, Apple's capitalization should be about $1.3 trillion" (RBC)

Let's leave the question of the fairness of such a fantastic share price, and accept it as a fact that Apple is the largest global company. Let's ask a simple but delicate question, who owns this company, at a cost equal to the budgets of several European countries combined?

It would seem that the quote from RBC clearly states that the main shareholder is a certain Karl Aikan, an eccentric billionaire, a cynical business shark, a well-known raider and extortionist, a brawler and much more. Actually, it is he who is most often mentioned in the media as the main shareholder and newsmaker. There is also Tim Cook - CEO Apple (the one that is officially gay), but he is a figure appointed by shareholders, that is, he is not the owner in any way.

However, upon closer examination of the situation, we find amazing fact- Billionaire Carl Icahn owns only 1 (one) percent of Apple shares. Of course, the cost of even one percent is a huge amount, but it's only one hundredth! Where is the rest? The question is not that hidden, but on the example of the same RBC, it is not only hushed up, but also openly falsified in the media.

Is it really difficult to look at open and completely official data from the register of shareholders? There is nothing easier, and we can easily do it ourselves:

Vanguard Group Inc. (The) 5.68%

State Street Corporation 4.11%

FMR, LLC 3.07%

BlackRock Institutional Trust Company, N.A. 2.72%

Bank of New York Mellon Corporation 1.42%

Northern Trust Corporation 1.39%

BlackRock Fund Advisors 1.21%

Amazing. discovery, but Carl Icahn is not even among the top ten shareholders of Apple! Who are these mysterious real owners?

In the first place is the Vanguard Group - for the uninitiated reader, and for many economists the name is unfamiliar, although in any reference book you can find information that the company controls assets of as much as 2 trillion dollars (2000 billion dollars). Which is three times the cost of the same Apple! These are the humble ones. In fact, the amount of assets under their control is several times larger, but we will analyze this later.

Before proceeding to a further analysis of the structure of shareholders and ownership, a small lyrical digression should be made.

The ideals of democracy (C) and the media image that serves as a screen for true owners do not sit well with the fact that all the world's largest companies are owned by the same bunch of people. How to hide this apparent contradiction? Everything is very simple - you need to create the appearance that there are supposedly many owners (shareholders) and they are all "different".

Indeed, how can the "masters of the world" have a miserable 5-6% of the shares? Yes, any liberal will laugh in your face if you tell him this. The fact that these "pathetic six percent" are worth forty-fifty billion dollars does not bother anyone - with such a modest package, it is already a problem to securely appoint your own general director. To completely control a company with a turnover of hundreds of billions of dollars, twenty percent is required - no more is needed, since it is impossible for competitors to collect a bag of more than 20% (it will cost under a hundred yards of $).

And suddenly, some Chinese will buy as much as seven percent of the shares and they will be able to run everything in the largest American company?

"Don't be like that!" - the real masters of the world decided a long time ago and secured themselves.

To understand how they did it total control and maintained the appearance of the absence of one owner, we return to our list of shareholders. Company in second place:

State Street Corporation - owns 4.11%

And who are they, the ordinary reader will ask? And again, Google (yahoo) to help us:

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/mh?s=STT+Major+Holders

And who are its largest shareholders?

1.Massachusetts Financial Services Co (Canadian Insurance Company- who owns confused)

2.Price (T.Rowe) Associates Inc - 7%

3.Vanguard Group (where without him!) - 6%

4. BlackRock (the turn will come to him soon!) - 5%

We look even deeper who is the shareholder of Price (T.Rowe) Associates Inc.

and we see all the same acquaintances: Vanguard and BlackRock (remember this name, they often meet, going hand in hand with our main character)

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/mh?s=TRow+Major+Holders

That is, in exactly the same manner, the monster Vanguard controls the second main shareholder of Apple! A simple trick and ten percent of the apple's shares are already in your pocket. But that's not all!

In the top ten there are two offices with the similar name BlackRock & BlaBla and the third time the BlackRock name is mentioned in State Street shareholders. (by the way, Vanguard has dozens of such subsidiaries - so it’s not a fact that we can even approximately calculate all their possessions - even the largest ones)

Naturally, among the owners of BlackRock we find all the same faces:

We add another four percent and we already get 14% of all Apple shares held by one office - Vanguard! And again, that's not all.

What else is left among the dummy owners of Yabluka?

FMR LLC (Fidelity Management and Research), Fidelity Investments similarly, we will find exactly identical names among the shareholders: Blackrock, Vanguard, State Street and so on.

That is, Fidelity is again controlled by the Vanguard Group!

Total: in the piggy bank "modest" 17%.

A wonderful scheme of mutual ownership and cross-corporation. And if any of the shareholders seems not directly related to Vanguard, then its shareholders are definitely under their control, and even in the third iteration (level) it will be the same.

That is Vanguard:

1. Officially - the main shareholder of Apple. For comparison, the clown who publicly portrays the largest shareholder of Apple - Carl Icahn has only 1% of the shares, which is five times less than one of this package.

2. Vanguard also has the largest stakes in almost every other company that owns large stakes in Apple. But even that is not enough!

3. Vanguard, not only owns the largest stakes of shares, but also controls the shareholders of companies from point 2. !!!

And in conclusion, a quote from Tatyana Volkova's blog in the topic:

About the octopus, the pyramid - and in general the continuation of the Vanguard

This is the picture that has emerged to date of the investigation. The largest companies in the world are Bank of America, JP Morgan, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.

Let's see who their biggest shareholders are. Bank of America: State Street Corporation, Vanguard Group, BlackRock, FMR (Fidelity), Paulson, JP Morgan, T. Rowe, Capital World Investors, AXA, Bank of NY, Mellon.

JP Morgan: State Street Corp., Vanguard Group, FMR, BlackRock, T. Rowe, AXA, Capital World Investor, Capital Research Global Investor, Northern Trust Corp. and Bank of Mellon.

Citigroup: State Street Corporation, Vanguard Group, BlackRock, Paulson, FMR, Capital World Investor, JP Morgan, Northern Trust Corporation, and Fairhome Capital Mgmt and Bank of NY Mellon.

Wells Fargo: Berkshire Hathaway, FMR, State Street, Vanguard Group, Capital World Investors, BlackRock, Wellington Mgmt, AXA, T. Rowe and Davis Selected Advisers.

Then check for yourself. The largest financial companies are fully controlled by ten institutional and/or fund shareholders, from which there is a core of four companies present at all times and in all decisions: Vanguard, Fidelity, BlackRock and State Street. All of them "belong to each other", but if you carefully balance the shareholdings, it turns out that in reality Vanguard controls all of its partners or "competitors", that is, Fidelity, BlackRock and State Street.

Now let's look at the "tip of the iceberg". That is, a few selected as the largest companies in various industries controlled by this "Big Four" and, on closer examination, simply Vanguard Corporation: Alcoa Inc. Altria Group Inc., American International Group Inc., AT&T Inc., Boeing Co., Caterpillar Inc., Coca-Cola Co., DuPont & Co., Exxon Mobil Corp., General Electric Co., General Motors Corporation, Hewlett- Packard Co., Home Depot Inc., Honeywell International Inc., Intel Corp., International Business Machines Corp., Johnson & Johnson, JP Morgan Chase & Co., McDonald's Corp., Merck & Co. Inc., Microsoft Corp. ., 3M Co., Pfizer Inc., Procter & Gamble Co., United Technologies Corp., Verizon Communications Inc., Wal-Mart Stores Inc. Time Warner, Walt Disney, Viacom, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, CBS Corporation, NBC Universal... published

It's hard to find a black cat in a dark room - especially if it's not there (Confucius)

In anticipation of the September 9 announcement of the iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus, interest in one of the most successful and expensive companies The world is growing, and many people are wondering: who is its true owner? One of the most popular studies of this issue in Runet was the publication “Who owns Apple? Hidden Masters of the World” by our colleagues from KONT. In it, the author, finding out the composition of both Apple shareholders and the owners of these shareholders, identified the Vanguard Group investment company as the main, and one might say, the true owner of the company. However, gross errors were made in this calculation, which your humble servant considered it his duty to pay attention to.

Vanguard Group (The) - 5.68%
State Street Corporation - 4.11%
Fidelity Management and Research (FMR) - 3.07%
BlackRock Institutional Trust Company - 2.72%
Bank of New York Mellon Corporation - 1.42%
Northern Trust Corporation - 1.39%
BlackRock Fund Advisors - 1.21%

This is information from open sources and it is quite consistent with the latest data from Yahoo Finance. Information about the owners of the State Street Corporation is not currently available, but according to the author of the article, the Vanguard Group owns 6% of it - the third largest share. The second largest share of State Street Corporation, according to the author, belongs to T. Rowe Price Group, in which, according to our data, the first largest share (6.19%) belongs to the Vanguard Group, and the second - to the same State Street Corporation (4.92%).

By summing up all these small Vanguard Group stakes in Apple and its shareholders, the author calculated 17% and effectively declared this investment group the owner of the company. Arithmetic calculations are richly flavored with conspiracy theories: the author claims that "all the world's largest companies belong to the same bunch of people" who "need to create the appearance that there are supposedly many owners (shareholders) and they are all different."

With all understanding of the bewitching appeal of conspiracy theories, they are one of the biggest misconceptions of mankind. On the one hand, people are trying to find an explanation for the events taking place in the world, and on the other hand, they do not have enough knowledge to make this explanation adequate to reality. In the old days, sorcerers with witches were blamed for the loss of livestock, crop failures, or other similar misfortunes, and now inquisitive conspiracy lovers are looking for conspiracies everywhere. But the truth is usually much more prosaic.

In our case, the author of the article was summed up by ignorance of the principles of financial reporting. Over the past decades, it has pursued the goal of giving investors the most reliable and complete picture of the financial condition of their investment object. Unlike formal and, by and large, useless reporting compiled according to Russian standards for statistics and tax authorities, in the Western world, reliable financial statements are the main source of information for all interested parties, and primarily for investors.

This introduction is necessary to understand that the rules of financial reporting in the West (IFRS in Europe, US GAAP in the USA) are akin to a military charter - they were written, if not in blood, then at least taking into account the scandals shaking the stock exchange caused by the manipulation of financial reporting or simply by the shortcomings of the rules. its compilation. These are not just general norms by which they show their financial position large companies, but the rules that allow you to do this as completely and reliably as possible, taking into account the experience accumulated by the financial world.

So, in accordance with the principles of modern financial reporting, one of the signs of control over a company by an investor is that this investor owns at least 50% of its shares. For influence, as a rule, 20% is enough. Those. the author's estimate of the Vanguard Group's stake in Apple (17%) does not even reach the level of influence. But more importantly, this assessment is completely contrary to the principle of determining equity used in the preparation of consolidated financial statements (they show financial condition not only of an individual company, but of all the companies it controls). This principle is that if company "A" owns company "B" by 50% (and therefore we can already talk about control), and company "B", in turn, owns company "C" by 50%, then company "A" actually controls company "C", although its estimated share in this company will already be well below 50%: 0.5 x 0.5 = 0.25, i.e. 25%.

The point of this approach is that having control over company B, company A can appoint a director there. Having become a director in company B, which in turn controls company C, that director can appoint a director in company C to a person nominated by company A. As a result, despite only having a 25% ultimate interest in company C, company A can appoint its management there - and therefore controls it. But for this prerequisite is the control of "A" over "B" and "B" over "C", which individually requires at least 50% shareholding.

In practice, situations are possible when, against the backdrop of many small shareholders, the actual control over the company is acquired by a single relatively large investor, but, firstly, in the case of Apple, we see several such investors, and secondly, in the presence of such control, this information was would have been disclosed, and the Vanguard Group in its reporting showed Apple not as an object of financial investments, but as its own company in the consolidated financial statements.

Therefore, even if Apple's capital is scattered among thousands or millions of small shareholders, it is incorrect to regard as the controlling owner an investor who only has a relatively large stake in this company. We see that there are several investors with relatively large stakes in Apple, just like in the capital structure of these investors there are several large stakes owned by other investors. Putting together the scattered shares of the Vanguard Group in different companies is like treating a slight sympathy of all the managers of a corporation for a young secretary as her control over the board of directors. By marrying one of them, she, under certain circumstances, can really get control over him, but easy sympathies different people in one big and bright feeling, alas, does not add up.

Returning to the great and terrible Vanguard Group, we note that according to a recent report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the combined share of this group as a beneficial owner (i.e. taking into account direct and indirect share ownership) is only 5.66%. If the Vanguard Group's shares spread across Apple's other shareholders had any cumulative effect, then this information would be reflected in the report.

So who then owns Apple, you ask? All shareholders of the company, and at the same time none of them. Such is the specificity of modern capitalism, which was written about with some tinge of regret in Soviet political economy textbooks: as the wealth of the middle class grows, its savings are accumulated and invested in various enterprises of the real economy (such as Apple) through various financial institutions: investment groups (such as Vanguard Group), banks, insurance companies, pension funds. Companies themselves are making similar investments - recall that in the second quarter of 2015, Apple's reserves exceeded $ 200 billion, and part of this money was probably invested in institutions like the Vanguard Group. The investments of these institutions in the real economy, as a rule, are so dispersed that it is simply pointless to talk about some kind of influence, and even more so control.

No one pursues such a goal, but even if they have a direct influence on the real economy, people in the financial world are not so reckless as to interfere in matters in which they understand little. Dividends are paid, stock prices are rising - that's fine. If serious problems arise, then the shareholders either get rid of the shares, or quite unanimously appoint new managers to the board of directors who will figure out how to solve all the problems and save them, the shareholders, investments. Regardless of who and to what extent shows this activity, the only concern of all investors is to preserve and increase their investments - no matter how lovers of conspiracy theories ascribe to them the desire for world power. In the end, this power itself is brought by money, and not by the color in which the backstage owners of Apple will order to paint the next iPhone at their secret meeting ...

Recently, the world was shocked by sensational news - the capitalization of the Bitten Apple company exceeded $ 700 billion.

But that's not all:

Let's leave the question of the fairness of such a fantastic share price, and accept as a fact that Apple is the world's largest company. Let's ask a simple but delicate question, who owns this company, at a cost equal to the budgets of several European countries combined?

It would seem that the quote from RBC clearly states that the main shareholder is a certain Karl Aikan, an eccentric billionaire, a cynical business shark, a well-known raider and extortionist, a brawler and much more. Actually, it is he who is most often mentioned in the media as the main shareholder and newsmaker. There is also Tim Cook - Apple's CEO (the one that is officially gay), but he is a figure appointed by shareholders, that is, he is not the owner in any way.

However, after carefully studying the situation, we discover a surprising fact - billionaire Carl Icahn owns only 1 (one) percent of Apple shares. Of course, the cost of even one percent is a huge amount, but it's only one hundredth! Where is the rest? The question is not that hidden, but on the example of the same RBC, it is not only hushed up, but also openly falsified in the media.

Is it really difficult to look at open and completely official data from the register of shareholders? There is nothing easier, and we can easily do it ourselves:

Vanguard Group Inc. (The) 5.68%

State Street Corporation 4.11%

BlackRock Institutional Trust Company, N.A. 2.72%

Bank of New York Mellon Corporation 1.42%

Northern Trust Corporation 1.39%

BlackRock Fund Advisors 1.21%

Amazing. discovery, but Carl Icahn is not even among the top ten shareholders of Apple! Who are these mysterious real owners?

Before proceeding to a further analysis of the structure of shareholders and ownership, a small lyrical digression should be made.

And suddenly, some Chinese will buy as much as seven percent of the shares and they will be able to run everything in the largest American company?

"Don't be like that!" - the real masters of the world decided a long time ago and secured themselves.

To understand how they exercised total control and maintained the appearance of the absence of one owner, we return to our list of shareholders. Company in second place:

State Street Corporation - owns 4.11%

And who are they, the ordinary reader will ask? And again, Google (yahoo) to help us:

And who are its largest shareholders?

1.Massachusetts Financial Services Co (Canadian insurance company - who owns is confusing)