Generally I think you'll find its the hedge funds and larger institutions followed by owners of the company and their board of directors (through options). Of course there are some individual retail shareholders that can hold a substantial number of shares as well.
With Noront Rosseau, Sprott, Pinetree and Genuity are the big shareholders to date. There may be a couple of others I forgot to mention. I think if memory serves me correctly Glorieux indicated that the retail share of the company is somewhere at the 65% level.
One of the big reasons the big institutions have large shareholdings is because of the way Private Placements are awarded. The retail investor is shut out of large scale buy-ins at locked in prices. This is where we are unable to increase our holdings in the company and where our slice of the pie starts to diminish. As a result the voting process for new boards and take-overs becomes increasingly a matter for the large shareholders to deal with. We then can only rock the boat during the vote, as we have just done with the past proxy take-over bid from Rosseau.
I personally would like to see a portion of the Private Placements be made available to retail shareholders, possible before the larger funds have the opportunity to buy in. That way they know how many shares are left for the larger funds to acquire. Its likely more of a pipe dream but hey...the retail investor may start to become more of a squeeky wheel and be afforded more options to buy in the future.
Mustangman
