With about four million share owners, AT&T is among the nation's most widely held companies.

In those other cases, the co-ops were in trouble too, with many unsold units, and share owners agreed to sell to a single investor.

Then there would be a vote of the share owners to choose a plan for restructuring or to proceed to liquidation.

The partition also divided the natural resources, industries, economic infrastructure, manpower, and military might, with India benefiting greatly by being the largest share owner.

Two million people (5% of the adult population) buy shares, almost doubling the number of share owners in Britain.

Q. Does paying attention to the share owners make you too short-term at times?

"The new deal you propose, in response to the commission, makes no sense for our share owners, for the same strategic reasons."

In the typical deal, the new securities dilute the holdings of existing share owners by 5 percent to 20 percent.

"We are making the strategic choice to establish two financially strong and independent companies that will deliver greater value to our share owners."

Should we return any money over this amount to the share owners by reducing their cost per share?