“No talk about Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix at company dinners”: the unwritten rule among office workers ... Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. alone enters the 8-million-minority-shareholder era

[Financial News] The number of minority shareholders in South Korean listed companies has risen by about 24% over the past 18 months, with a sharp increase concentrated in a handful of large-cap stocks, including SK Hynix and LS ELECTRIC Co., Ltd.
At the end of the first half of this year, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. had the most minority shareholders of any listed company.
An analysis on the 10th by corporate research institute Leaders Index of minority shareholders at 1,992 South Korean listed companies found that their number rose by 15,850,356 (24.2%), from 65,516,465 at the end of 2024 to 81,366,821 at the end of the first half of this year.
A minority shareholder is a shareholder who owns less than a specified proportion of a company’s issued shares.
Generally, the term refers to a shareholder who owns less than 1% of a company’s total issued shares carrying voting rights; major shareholders and related parties are excluded.
Of the 1,992 companies surveyed, the number of minority shareholders increased at just 601. It declined at 1,384 companies—more than twice the number where it increased—while the remaining seven saw no change. The analysis found that a handful of large-cap stocks drove the overall increase in minority shareholders.
The number of shares held by minority shareholders fell 10.3% over the same period, from 42,720,140,000 to 38,329,880,000. Their share of all issued stock also fell by 1.9 percentage points, from 49.5% to 47.6%.
Excluding people counted as shareholders of multiple companies, the number of people who owned shares in South Korean listed companies stood at 14,558,479 at the end of last year, up 332,098 (2.3%) from 14,226,381 the previous year.
Of these, individual investors numbered 14,423,340 at the end of last year, accounting for 99.1% of all stockholders.
By company, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. had the most minority shareholders, at 7,971,242 at the end of the first half of this year.
That was an increase of 2,811,032 (54.5%) from 5,160,210 at the end of 2024. Compared with the approximately 14.42 million individual investors in South Korea at the end of last year, that figure is about 55%.
SK Hynix, which ranked second, saw its number of minority shareholders grow 4.4-fold over the 18-month period, from 780,867 to 3,461,526.
Next came Doosan Enerbility (1,732,023), Kakao Corp. (1,486,523), Naver (1,399,782) and LG Electronics (1,227,359). A total of six companies had more than 1 million minority shareholders.
Hurim Robot had the highest proportion of shares held by minority shareholders, at 93.4%. It was followed by Peptron (91.5%) and HLB (91.3%). At all three companies, minority shareholders were found to hold at least 90% of the total issued shares.
[email protected] An Ga-eul Reporter