Black business people on a table

What Is A Stockholder?

Post was last updated: January 20, 2024
Black business people on a table
Stakeholder meeting in Malawi

Hell on this page you will learn what is a Stockholder including diving a little deeper by teaching you basic Stockholder responsibilities, and how to buy stock in Malawian companies.

What is a Stockholder?

A stockholder is an individual who owns at least one share of stock in a given company. Most often, the term refers to individuals who hold stock in publicly held companies, which means the companies are traded on a stock exchange such as the New York Stock Exchange. A privately held company, however, can also issue shares of stock to the owners and those owners are also referred to as stockholders.

Also called shareholders, stockholders have an ownership interest in the company whose stock they own. When a company issues stock, it determines how much it needs to issue to raise the funds it needs. The percentage of ownership in a company that a stockholder has is dependent on how many shares of stock the company has. For example, if a company issues 100,000 shares of stock and a stock holder owns 90,000 shares, the stockholder has a controlling interest in the company and can dictate what occurs. On the other hand, if a company issues 100 million shares of stock, then a stockholder who owns 90,000 shares doesn’t have as much influence or as much of a controlling interest.

At times, stockholders serve a very important role in the takeover of a company. An individual or group of investors can actually achieve a hostile takeover of a business through buying up a controlling portion of the business’ stock. They may do so by making an offer directly to all the stockholders of the company — usually of a price higher than each share of stock is currently selling for — in the hopes that all the stockholders will sell their shares to them, giving them control.

How to buy Stocks In Malawi

NOTE: You can read our guide on how to invest on the Malawi Stock Exchange.

If you want to buy stocks in Malawian companies like TNM, Airtel, MTL, Press Trust Corporation, you simply need to contact each of these companies, either by email or rather by phone(most companies in MW are slow to respond to emails, sad but true) and if the company you are inquiring about is listed on the Malawi Stock Exchange, then as long as you are a legal resident/citizen of Malawi, you will be able to buy stocks.

Here at BusinessMalawi.com are working on making it easier for anyone in Malawi or Africa to buy stocks on the Malawian Stock Exchange online. Simply bookmark us or contact us via email for detailed and simple instructions.

Walinase Mayuni
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