Shares

All player corporations in EVE have shares, which are unique to the corporation. On forming a corporation 1000 shares will be created in the corporation wallet. Additional shares can be created by a corporation vote.

Hint: As a CEO, you should take all Shares from your corporation wallet and place them into your personal wallet, so that any corporation members issued director rights can't take the shares out of the wallet and usurp you as CEO.

Shares can be transfered from a corporation to other players or corporations and vice-versa. A player does not need to be in the corporation to hold shares.

Current shareholders and the number of shares they own in the corporation can be seen by opening the corporation wallet, clicking on shares, and then clicking on shareholders.

Shareholders

By being a shareholder in a corporation, you are allowed the following actions.

Votes and Voting Rights

When a corporation creates a corporation vote, all shareholders receive a message with details of the vote, and can right-click on the shares in their own wallet to make a decision on the vote. Any player holding shares can see history of votes in the corporation.

Issuing Dividends

A corporation CEO can issue dividends to all shareholders. This is done from the corporation control panel, home tab. The CEO nominates a sum to dividend, and it is distributed to all shareholders proportional to the % of shares they hold in the company. There is no limitation to the frequency of issuing dividends.

Hint: Dividends can also be issued to all members of the corporation, there is no need to distribute shares to corporation members for distributing wealth.

Claiming CEO

A shareholder inside a corporation that holds more than 5% of the shares, can force a vote to take over CEOship of the corporation.

Forced Messaging

As all shareholders receive a message with no CSPA charge whenever a vote is made, delivering shares to people and then making a vote will force message delivery to the players.

Transferring Shares

Shares can be transferred only directly from wallet to wallet, there is no function to trade shares. Therefore the transfer of shares to players is a 2-step action;

1. Player A transfers shares to Player B
2. Player B transfers payment (eg. ISK) to Player A

As it's a two-step action, it is subject to scamming. The majority of players overcome this through using a player trusted by all parties to act as a broker. This is achieved as follows:

1. Player A transfers shares to Trusted Player C
2. Player B transfers payment (eg. ISK) to Trusted Player C
3. Player C transfers shares to Player B
4. Player C transfers payment (eg. ISK) to player A

There are a number of known 3rd party brokers on EGSE

Tracking past dividends

There are a number of sites that track a history of dividends, including EGSE.

Recovering Shares

There is no way to force another player to return shares to a corporation, so be careful who you give shares to.

Meta-uses

The main meta use for shares is a corporation selling them in order to raise funds, based on future promised dividends. There are many stories of successful corporations honouring these promises, as there are many stories of corporations taking the raised capital as a scam.