Is there a way to find out who owns stock in a specific publicly traded company?

Answer 1

There are "insiders", which are corporate officers, including directors, which must be listed with the Securities and Exchange Commission if they own and trade their company's stock. There are those with "significant interest", folks like Boone Pickens, Warren Buffet, and Carl Icahn who take large stakes and try to leverage it into some degree of control or influence. Those have to register as well.

Those close to control and influential interests are public record. You can't just call up Conoco-Phillips and say "How many shares does [Rabbit] own and where are the dividend checks mailed?" Besides, there is an enormous pile of anonymous shares that are held by brokerages and your name is on their account, with information only going to the corporation if there are dividends to pay or stock proxys to mail.

Answer 2

There must be a way to get a list of all the owners, or else there could never be a tender offer or a proxy fight. I imagine you could contact investor relations at the company and they would let you know if that was something they could provide. Of course, as Rabbit said, it would primarily be a list of brokerages who are holding the securities in street name for their clients. That and - depending on the stock - mutual fund managers and index funds and whatnot. I don't think you're ever going to see a list as granular as each individual investor's name.

Answer 3

Yes.

Answer 4

Sure, those are public records, you can access them on-line.