Shareholder

A shareholder is anyone who owns at least one share of a company's stock, which makes them a partial owner of that business. Owning shares typically comes with the right to vote on major company decisions and to receive a proportional share of any dividends the company pays.

A majority shareholder owns more than half of a company's shares and can generally control the outcome of votes on their own. Everyone below that threshold is a minority shareholder, whose influence depends on how the rest of the ownership is spread out and on protections written into corporate law and the company's own governance rules.