Читать книгу Starting With Shares - Roger Kinsky - Страница 38

You might be surprised to learn that, despite the large number of different company shares traded on the Australian market, there are many, many more companies you can't buy shares in or subscribe to. This means you simply can't become a part‐owner of the business, no matter how much you might want to. A large number of private companies (Pty Ltd) are held by private owners who want to retain the business and not transfer it to public ownership. A prime example is Aldi, which is a very successful and expanding supermarket chain in Australia. You can't become an Aldi shareholder because Aldi is a privately owned company and all profits flow back to the owners.

Another type of company you can't become a shareholder in directly is a fully‐owned subsidiary company. A good example is Bunnings, which is a very successful hardware chain operating in Australia. You can't become a Bunnings shareholder because Bunnings is a fully‐owned subsidiary of Wesfarmers. The only way you can get a slice of the action at Bunnings is to buy Wesfarmers shares. The problem is that Wesfarmers owns a lot of other enterprises so when you buy Wesfarmers shares you get all the others in the package and Bunnings profits will be diluted.

Another problem is that many of the larger and most profitable companies that operate in Australia are based overseas and so their shares aren't listed with an Australian exchange. Examples of these include Google, Facebook, Microsoft and General Motors. In fact, the value of Australian listed shares is less than 2% of the world market. We are indeed small players!