CORPORATE OWNERSHIP IN SPAIN

In this paper we analyse the structure of ownership in non-financial Spanish listed companies in the period 1996-2002, focussing on the control chain methodology. The results obtained show that the main shareholder’s control threshold stands at about 29 % of the voting rights and that in 2002 families were the ultimate owners in 52.7 % of the firms. On the other hand, the use of pyramid structures continues to increase. In 2002, 29.1 % of the companies were controlled in this way, which means that the ratio of voting rights to cash flow rights for this year was 0.89