A guy tried to tell me that some order of Nuns owned the huge grocery store Safeway. Doesn’t seem likely…does it?
No.
You can own a piece of it, if you like.
Safeway is a public company, traded on the New York Stock Exchange (where their ticker symbol is SWY).
In Britain, Safeway stores are owned by an entirely separate publicly-listed company, Safeway PLC, which is also not owned by nuns (although some penguins may hold a few shares in it).
Note that the yahoo financial pages, such as Reeder’s summary, also provide listings of the major institutional holders in a company, as well as listings of insiders. Safeway, not surprisingly, has about 40% of its outstanding shares held by its top institutional and mutual fund investors. Fidelity owns almost 7%: