Humanities desk
< July 17	<< Jun \| July \| Aug >>	July 19 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Humanities Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

July 18

Street Map with Baldwin NY School District Boundaries

I've searched the web but cannot find a Google map or any other app's map of the Baldwin NY School District. I've phoned the School District office and they confirm that no such map exists online. The only available possibility is found on schooldigger.com, but the street names are not visible and the page is cluttered with other overlaid information. Thank you.WhoIsSylvia? (talk) 02:15, 18 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Presumably you're talking about this map (click on Boundaries, then District)? It seems fine to me, you can zoom in to see the individual street names. --Viennese Waltz 08:17, 18 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Is this Baldwin Senior High School (New York)? We've got a zoomable map linked from our article that might be what you want. The software won't let me link it directly from here, but click on the article, scroll down to External Links and click the City Data entry. 70.67.193.176 (talk) 15:49, 18 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Ownership of Home Depot

How much of Home Depot does Bernard Marcus own, if any? "Asking for a friend." -- Beland (talk) 04:53, 18 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

In theory easy to find out, in practice impossible. You can look up the results of public filings at sits like [1], where you can find who owns how much stock, but since most stocks are owned indirectly, you just see a list of banks. Insiders cannot hide this way if they have bought or sold stocks that year. Marcus also, I don't know if he's still considered an insider. Someguy1221 (talk) 06:15, 18 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

In the UK we have a site https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/ where all UK registered companies are listed. It is as easy as typing in the name of the company or one of the directors and pulling up the information. You will be able to see all information including past year filings, directors, past and present and charges. I would expect the USA has something similar but will leave that with another expert to comment on. Anton 81.131.40.58 (talk) 13:31, 18 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I don't claim to be an expert, but I do know that the registers at Companies House do not include information on who owns how many shares. This information is contained in the Shareholders' Register, which is maintained by the company's designated Registrar, an independent specialist public limited company. If you look at G & G v Wikimedia Foundation Inc you will see that the Foundation (the owner of this website) is described as "A Company organised under the laws of the state of Florida". Each state has its own laws relating to the control of limited companies. See List of company registers#United States for company registration information. In the case of Georgia (where The Home Depot is headquartered) the relevant authority is the "Georgia Corporations Division". A search can be made by Business Name on their website [2]. As in Britain, information on who owns how many shares is held elsewhere. A search for "The Home Depot, Inc" brings up three names and the "jurisdiction" is stated to be "Delaware". There is a search facility on the website of the Delaware Division of Corporations [3]. The Home Depot, Inc was incorporated on 29 June 1978. Information about officers is available for a fee. In England the "Register of Shareholders" is a public document. The U S equivalent is the "shareholder list". Investopedia [4] says:

... companies may provide access to the shareholder register per state laws or a company's by-laws and charter.

The Securities and Exchange Commission website [5] has a search bar. Typing in "The Home Depot, Inc" brings up a number of "EDGAR Search Results". These link to a wealth of reports such as "Statement of changes in beneficial ownership of securities" and there are some names but these are not linked to shares held. There's a step-by-step guide at [6]. Particularly useful is [7]. Form 13F filings are very useful. This website [8] states:

Publicly listed companies are required to disclose the identity of their directors, officers and shareholders holding at least 5% of such company.

I'm interested in this too. For onlookers, what this is about is a movement among Trump opponents to boycott Home Depot due to founder Marcus's sizeable contributions to the GOP. Marcus retired in 2002, and so far I've been unable to find out if there's any connection remaining at all. My totally unsubstantiated guess is "not much if any", for a few reasons. We don't need to hear anything here about the wisdom or political propriety of such boycotts in general, but I'd really like to know if Marcus holds enough HD stock that a boycott (and I guess the decrease in stock price as a result) would affect him noticeably. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆 𝄐𝄇} 18:31, 19 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

At his age, a lot of whatever he owns would have been put in trusts and other tax-avoidance methods. He likely controls a good deal more than he owns on the books. This should be an interesting boycott, due to fact that in many areas, Home Depot is the go-to option. Literally. Certainly for small contractors, which is one of Home Depot's strengths, and which probably will not be persuaded to boycott.--Wehwalt (talk) 18:58, 19 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

"Likely controls more than he owns" -- how does that work? What is his voting power? Or are people promoting the boycott simply assuming with no other information than "he founded the company"? I'm trying to resist speculation, not promote it. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆 𝄐𝄇} 21:45, 19 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

If he puts stock into a trust for estate planning pruposes, he might for example reserve the right to vote the stock. Estate planning for the superrich is not my field, but my recollection is that as long as he's not the beneficiary of the trust, he could even be the trustee, or it might be a lawyer he trusts. But it wouldn't be "in his name".--Wehwalt (talk) 22:02, 19 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

So, yes, purely speculation. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆 𝄐𝄇} 22:15, 19 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

U.S. securities laws require disclosure of the beneficial owner of large blocs of shares of publicly traded companies. (See the articles I linked below.) Even if they're held in trusts or whatnot, you have to report the person or persons who ultimately controls the shares. This is to prevent the very thing you're talking about, where unknown people control large amounts of public companies. I'm no lawyer, though, so I can't guarantee there aren't potential ways around this requirement, like use of shell companies in tax havens. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 00:06, 20 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

For the U.S., the relevant SEC filings are Schedule 13D/Schedule 13G and Form 3/Form 4/Form 5. You will have to dig through those for Home Depot to figure out how much of the company he owns, if any. This is the kind of thing paralegals get paid to do. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 00:06, 20 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

He's not a 5% owner; that would be easy enough to determine, and we wouldn't be asking these questions. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆 𝄐𝄇} 05:59, 20 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Do you know something I don't? I was under the impression that you would have to go through Home Depot's original IPO filings and all its 13D/Gs and Forms 3/4/5 to see if he was ever a substantial owner, and if so, if he ever sold his shares. And this is quite a pain because Home Depot went public in the '80s, meaning all of its SEC filings pre-EDGAR are paper filings, meaning you either have to request copies from the SEC or retain a securities research service that has access to copies. I checked, but unfortunately Home Depot hasn't digitized its pre-EDGAR filings. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 22:03, 20 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Of course he was a substantial owner. That's not in question. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆 𝄐𝄇} 22:43, 20 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

List of states with limited recognition

In general, recognising a breakaway state means breaching if not ruining your relations with the claimant state. Yet, the single state in the list with no recognition at all (Somaliland) is also the one that is claimed by the single weakest and least influential among the claimant states (Somalia). Why doesn't anyone want to annoy Somalia when many countries have no problems with annoying countries such as China, Israel and Serbia? --Qnowledge (talk) 19:30, 18 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

What benefit does recognizing Somaliland provide for other states to do so? --Jayron 32 19:37, 18 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Two considerations of country X declaring that it recognises Somaliland are that

(i) it might provoke factions in Somalia to commit aggressive actions against Somaliland in 'reply', and

(ii) it might weaken any diplomatic influences that country X is currently able to exert on Somalia.

In international diplomacy, issues of 'face' can seem silly but are nevertheless real and have to be taken into consideration. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.122.177.55 (talk) 19:50, 18 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's not so much that recognising Somaliland (a functioning democratic state which controls its own territory) would annoy Somalia (a non-functioning, non-democratic state which controls hardly any territory), but rather that if you start recognising breakaway states, you put the willies up countries with breakaway states of their own - it makes it harder for them to justify not recognising them. So you don't recognise Somaliland not because it would annoy Somalia - nobody gives a damn about that - but because it would annoy China etc. DuncanHill (talk) 20:08, 18 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure China cares at all. If it can profit from both (and it can!), it will [9] Gem fr (talk) 22:43, 18 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

China doesn't care at all about either Somalia or Somaliland, except as centres of profit and influence, but it cares if other states start legitimising breakaway states because large parts of the Chinese Empire would rather be independent. DuncanHill (talk) 22:48, 18 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It's more likely that the entity on whose wrong side one does not want to fall is the African Union and its member states, not China. Most (if not all) states are willing to let the AU determine a solution, and will fall in line with it. Here are a couple of articles on the issue: [10] [11]. Xuxl (talk) 12:05, 19 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Sometimes, pissing off the claimant state is just the point of recognising a breakaway state. Kosovo, for instance, was recognized to piss off Serbia and Russia.

Plus, there is just no need to recognize Somaliland to trade with it; Somaliland is in no position to blackmail others states "you recognize us or... (whatever: your merchants are forbidden, we won't help you solve you migrant problem, we will deny you access to some military ressource..." Gem fr (talk) 22:43, 18 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]