Meaning & use
majority stake
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Meaning
nouncountablebusiness
Ownership of more than half of a company's shares, which gives the holder control over major decisions.
Grammar: Usually takes a: she bought a majority stake in the firm; the preposition is in.
Patterns
- a majority stake in something
- hold a majority stake
The investor bought a majority stake in the airline.
A majority stake lets the owner appoint most of the board.
The founders kept a majority stake after the funding round.
Word forms
| plural | majority stakes |
|---|
Common combinations
- acquire a majority stake
- A foreign group plans to acquire a majority stake in the bank.
- hold a majority stake
- The family still holds a majority stake in the brewery.
- sell a majority stake
- The founder agreed to sell a majority stake to a rival.
- take a majority stake
- The fund wants to take a majority stake in the start-up.
- a majority stake in a company
- He owns a majority stake in a small shipping company.
Synonyms and how they differ
- controlling interest
- Controlling interest is nearly the same, but it stresses the power to control, which can be held with less than half the shares.
- majority holding
- Majority holding is a more British and slightly more formal phrase for the same idea.
- majority shareholding
- Majority shareholding is the legal-sounding version and is common in contracts and reports.
Opposites
Word family
- majority noun
- the larger part of a group
- stake noun
- a share or financial interest in something
- stakeholder noun
- a person with an interest in a business
- majority shareholder noun
- an owner of more than half the shares
Commonly confused: majority stake or steak?
majority stake vs steak
Steak is a cut of meat; it sounds the same as stake but has an unrelated meaning.
Practice
After buying 60 percent of the shares, the investor held a ___ in the company.
Choose one answer.
Sixty percent is more than half, so it is a majority stake. A minority stake would be under half.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “majority stake”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.