Australia

Are Australians taking over the world? I was once on a trip to Alaska and I met a kind of burly, “hail-fellow-well-met” guy, and he made, what I thought at the time (this was around 2001), a very strange comment. Certainly off-the wall.

He said to me “The world is entirely run by 25 incredibly wealthy men in Australia”. Aside from the fact that what we were discussing was in no way related to who was running the world, I was taken aback by the concept itself. Why were they congregating in Australia? And how were they running the world, anyway? Were they a secret organization like James Bond’s SMERSH or SD-6 from ALIAS?

Now, you are probably wondering what in the world this has to do with transfer agents. Here’s what; the largest and the 3rd largest of the U.S.’s stock transfer agents (rumored to soon become the second largest) are owned, not by Americans, but by Australian companies! So, maybe the guy I met in Alaska was right?

Anyway, in case you were wondering, StockTrans is still 100% American owned and operated, and will remain that way! But, if you want to know something really strange, a while back I got a call from someone claiming to represent a THIRD Australian company (an “investment company”) that wanted to purchase a stock transfer agency and wanted to know whether StockTrans was for sale. I, of course, said no--but, Jeez! I mean, I like Crocodile Dundee and shrimp on the barbie as much as the next guy, but, really…what IS going on in Australia?