How much stock do i need to own to influence / be on the board?

depends on how much they emitted and who else are the owners. if 100% is exchange traded and widespread then holding just a few % can give you controlling influence, since most tiny shareholders never even bother to show up for an annual general meeting. you definitely start to gain tracking above 5% (and beware, between 5 or 10% is usually when you have to publicly declare your ownership by law or by exchange rules).

that is to say, if there is a consortium owning 51% and they are opposed to your plans then even owning 20% can leave you standing in the rain.

also, you can't exactly put yourself on the board easily, but it depends where the company is incorporated and how it is structured.

>>1664083
So how do you go to annual meetings and stuff like that?

>>1664094
first make sure you even own shares with voting rights. it's somewhat frequent that companies have different classes of stock listed (like Google has A-shares with 1 vote per share, unlisted B-shares with 10 votes per share so the founders always keep control and C-shares with no voting right but slightly more profit).

then ask your broker. very often your shares are held collectively with all the other customers of your broker ("street name account") and they have to first separate yours out to register you as a participant (so you can't go around, sell them and duplicate votes). brokers typically ask for a handling fee for registering you, which i've seen go as high as several hundred bucks. plus you have to get to wherever they hold the meeting on your own expense, naturally.

Any shareholder can vote for decisions the corporations make. Corporations make decisions by the vote of a shareholder. If a single person owns 51% or more, then it's virtually impossible to have any influence that collides with his or her interests. However, to prevent misuse of this power, there are many circumstances where the law requires that a resolution be passed with at least 66% votes in favor. So actually decision making of should we put dildos at every bathroom stall requires a 66% vote of yes, not 51%.

You would ideally want at least 1% ownership of shares to have any significant influence. Most people who only own a few shares of stocks in their investment portfolio don't even care about voting or meetings or anything. They aren't investing at all in my opinion. They are just buying shares hoping it goes up before they sell. Whether you hold it for 20 seconds or 20 years, it's all trading in my opinion unless you're actually involved in the corporate politics and decision making.

>>1664083
This is misinformation. First off, there is no such thing as an owner in a corporation. Even if you own 99% of the shares, you aren't legally the owner of the company.

>>1664163
And I forgot to mention this. Your shares must holding voting rights.

>>1664178
how is my post "misinformation"? you said exactly the same stuff.

>depends on how much they emitted and who else are the owners.
i'm talking about the other owners of the shares they emitted. also - collectively all the shareholders *are* the owners of the corporation, that's the definition.