See: Bearer Bonds.
Most stock trading is fairly anonymous. Like trolling a bar around closing time. However, sometimes the relationship between the person holding the stock and the company that issued the stock is more formal. Those situations lead to registered holders.
The term refers to a shareholder who has their name (and other pertinent information) registered with the company (with something called a share registry...which makes it kind of like a wedding). Their stock is held directly with the issuing company.
Related or Semi-related Video
Finance: What is shelf registration?3 Views
Finance a la shmoop what is shelf registration?
well there are mussels and oysters and clams...Oh wait, that would be shellfish [Seafood dishes appear]
registration but it's making me hungry and yeah the real definition of shelf
registration needs a little horseradish or something just to like you know wake [Woman sniffs horseradish while in bed]
you up specifically a shelf registration is a kind of public offering where banks
and other fiduciary fancy institutions can offer new securities in companies
without going through the myriad dance steps needed for a full-contact naked
IPO and usually a shelf registration applies in the situation where a company [Man discussing shelf registration in a club]
in a similar business might be offering the same product but in different
geographies like a company drilling oil pipelines in the southeast might file to [Oil pipeline appears]
raise money just from investors in that area while doing a similar offering in
the northwest in middle America and maybe even out of the country in this
situation the business dynamics are almost identical in each area because
like oil is oil right with the one exception of specific regional laws that [Wolves appear from woods]
may differ like you gotta be really careful about polluting the Everglades
in Florida and well, lakes in general and some
people care a lot about that and some people don't like people in the
northwest are a whole lot more sensitive to polluting arsenic on their moose then
are the kindly loving citizens of kamchatka in I think that's in eastern [Man appears with moose in Russia]
Russia in making this kind of shelf offering the filings are essentially in
piles on a shelf with a few pages changed for each flavor of filing you
know simplifies things a lot they are then sent out to the relevant investors
who then do their own assessments as to whether or not they want to buy in well [Woman investor looking at folder]
the investment system can come in the form of warrants, convertible bonds,
series of equities in various shapes and forms but companies appreciate the
ability to file shelf registrations because of the dramatic reduction in
paper cost lawyer fees and well, filing experiences where the auditors first
comment is you know turn your head and cough...stop polluting and you won't [Doctor asks patient to turn head and cough]
cough so much
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