Money Stuff: The Podcast · Friday, September 11, 2026
The podcast delves into the complex ownership structure of public companies, revealing that Seed & Co., acting as a nominee for the Depository Trust Company (DTC), is the largest shareholder of most companies. This system, developed for efficiency, means that individual investors technically own shares through an entry on Robinhood's ledger, which leads to Robinhood owning an entry on DTC's ledger, and ultimately Seed & Co. owning the stock on AMC's ledger. This structure bypasses direct company-shareholder relationships and is being challenged by tokenization.
“So, according to you, I really hope this is right. The entity that owns most shares of most companies is called Seed & Co, which sounds like something you would make up because it's spelled C-E-D-E.”
“But... No, this is true. Actually, I went and looked and Wikipedia quotes a report from 1998 saying that Seed & Co owns 83% of all stocks in the United States.”
“So DTC is the clearinghouse. It just has all the stocks. And it keeps track of the movements of the stock rather than relying on companies or transfer agents or like paper share certificates.”
“And so most companies like don't directly have like a list of shareholders. It's not like the company keeps the list of shareholders. The company keeps a list of shareholders, but like the number one name on the list is Seed & Co and everyone who owns stock through a brokerage or in like normal ways owns through Seed & Co.”