Headquarters United States of America | Founded 1996 | |
Cede and Company, also known as "Cede and Co." or "Cede & Co.", is an organization formed for the purpose of efficiently processing transfers of stock certificates on behalf of Depository Trust Company, the central securities depositary used by the United States National Market System, which includes the New York Stock Exchange, Nasdaq, and other exchanges together with associated clearinghouses such as NSCC, FICC, DTCC, and others. Cede technically owns substantially all of the publicly issued stock in the United States. Thus, investors do not themselves hold direct property rights in stock, but rather have contractual rights that are part of a chain of contractual rights involving Cede.
Structure as a partnership
A common misconception is that Cede and Company is merely a fictitious legal name used to refer to Depository Trust Company. In fact, Cede is actually a New York City-based partnership of certain employees of DTC. Cede is a separate legal person from Depository Trust Company, which is owned by DTC Participants, who are banks and brokerage houses, and not employees of DTC.
One reason Cede is structured as a partnership is that each general partner can order transfers of stock registered in the name of the partnership without the need of presenting a separate corporate resolution to the stock issuer's transfer agent or stock registrar to validate the authority of the transfer.