Willis Towers Watson Public Limited Company

The full register, from 13F filings

The Register tab above is hand research: a dozen holders, each traced to the filing it came from. This asks the same question of the whole market for the quarter ended 31-mar-2026, where 710 managers reported a position. Broad where the research is deep, and shallow in the ways a 13F always is.

Built from 13F filings, which report US listed, long, US custodied positions only. A register from this source is a floor rather than a level: a holder's true position can be far larger, as BlackRock's ASML stake shows at 1.28m shares in a 13F against 26.3m in its 13G/A. Holdings held through derivatives, outside US custody, or below a manager's reporting obligation do not appear. Where a holder is marked as a family, its total sums several separate filing entities and describes something no single filing describes; the constituent entities and their share counts are listed so the total can be checked. That roll-up can legitimately exceed the family's own Schedule 13G, because a 13G is filed by one legal entity: Vanguard reports Alphabet through ten advisory entities, and The Vanguard Group Inc itself reported zero after its January 2026 disaggregation.

What a reader needs to know to read these numbers

• Willis Towers Watson Public Limited Company is incorporated in Ireland (Elm Park, Merrion Road, Dublin 4) but reports in USD and files as a US domestic filer (10-K/10-Q/DEF 14A rather than 20-F/6-K). Two effects of the Irish incorporation observed: the equity is called 'ordinary shares' throughout (nominal value $0.000304635 per share) rather than 'common stock', and the 2026 DEF 14A includes a specific proposal on statutory pre-emption rights under Irish law. Nothing observed indicates the Irish incorporation itself changes who must file a 13D/G against a NASDAQ-listed, SEC-reporting Irish plc.
• shares_outstanding (92,871,937) is taken from the 10-Q cover page: 'As of July 27, 2026, there were outstanding 92,871,937 ordinary shares.' This is the newest and lowest of several recent counts on record, consistent with WTW's large buyback program: 99,806,000 (31 Dec 2024 balance sheet), 95,079,835 (31 Dec 2025 balance sheet / 10-K), 94,203,101 (23 Mar 2026 proxy record date), 93,003,869 (30 Jun 2026 balance sheet), 92,871,937 (27 Jul 2026 10-Q cover page, used here). All institutional 13F percentages and the insider aggregate percentage in this file are recomputed against this newest denominator rather than any stale one, per the project's rule against the Honeywell-style stale-denominator trap.
• Holdings side: searched the FY2025 10-K (period 31 Dec 2025, filed 25 Feb 2026) and the Q2 2026 10-Q (period 30 Jun 2026, filed 30 Jul 2026, the newest filing on record) for 'equity method', 'joint venture', 'unconsolidated', 'investment in', 'equity investment', 'non-marketable', 'associates', 'minority interest', 'variable interest entity'. Two things were found. (1) WTW SOLD its original Willis Re reinsurance broking business to Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. in 2021; this is a COMPLETED CASH EXIT with no equity retained: WTW received a $750 million earnout (finally allocated and received in H1 2025, cash, not equity) related to that 2021 sale, and separately settled a note receivable from the 2020 sale of its Max Matthiessen subsidiary and recognized a gain/loss on the 2024 sale of its TRANZACT business; none of these three divestitures (Willis Re to Gallagher 2021, Max Matthiessen 2020, TRANZACT 2024) left WTW holding equity in the divested business, so per the project's rule a completed exit with no retained equity is recorded here as a note with NO row rather than a null-shares row. (2) Separately and confusingly under the SAME 'Willis Re' name, WTW re-entered reinsurance broking in Q4 2024 by taking a genuine new minority equity stake (preference and ordinary shares) in a newly formed joint venture with Bain Capital; this IS a real, current, sourced holding and is recorded as the one holdings-side row in this file, unsized because no ownership percentage, share count, or total carrying value is disclosed anywhere in either filing checked (only the $30 million INCREMENTAL 2025 investment amount is given). Exhibit 21 to the 10-K (subsidiaries list) was checked and carries NO ownership-percentage column at all (a bare jurisdiction/name list), a genuine negative for finding any further percentage-sized stake; it separately lists several wholly owned 'Willis Re'-named legal entities (Bermuda, Germany, UK, US-Delaware) that are retained WTW subsidiaries distinct from the Bain Capital joint venture vehicle. No other named investee or joint venture was found in either filing.
• Capital Group swept across all 8 currently active registrants (Capital International, Inc./CA/ CIK 0000895213, Capital Group Investment Management Pte. Ltd. CIK 0001939970, Capital Group Private Client Services, Inc. CIK 0001857666, Capital International Ltd /CA/ CIK 0001065350, Capital International Sarl CIK 0001065349, Capital Research Global Investors CIK 0001422848, Capital World Investors CIK 0001422849, Capital International Investors CIK 0001562230, each Q2 2026 13F-HR filed 12 Aug 2026) per the project's TransDigm/Allegion precedent (an EDGAR company-name search for 'capital group', 'capital international', 'capital research' and 'capital world' under type 13F was used to enumerate all 11 historically-registered Capital Group entities; 3 of the 11 (Capital Group Companies Inc CIK 0000732812, Capital Group International Inc CIK 0000949308, Capital Research & Management Co CIK 0000017283) have not filed a 13F since 2002-2007 and are dormant, so were not re-checked). NONE of the 8 active registrants holds any WTW position (CUSIP G96629103) as of 30 Jun 2026: a genuine negative across the whole family, consistent with data/registers/WTW.json (31 Mar 2026 snapshot), which also carries no Capital Group entity for WTW.
• Proxy 5%-owner table cross-check (the specific check requested for this company, after the Allegion precedent where Vanguard was omitted entirely): WTW's 2026 DEF 14A DOES list The Vanguard Group by name in its 5%-owner table, unlike Allegion, so this is not a total-omission gap. However the figure shown (11,617,466 sh, 12.33%) is stale (sourced to a Feb 2024 13G/A as of Dec 2023), and the proxy's own footnote discloses that Vanguard's most recent Schedule 13G/A (filed 26 Mar 2026) reports 0.0% ownership as of 13 Mar 2026 following an internal reorganization that disaggregated Vanguard's reporting down to subsidiary entities, none of which individually crosses the 13G 5% threshold. This is functionally the same underlying phenomenon as the Allegion/Emcor pattern (parent-level 13G ownership disclaimed and pushed to subsidiaries) but WTW's proxy is more transparent about it than Allegion's was, since it explicitly flags the 0.0% current figure rather than silently omitting Vanguard. The fresh Q2 2026 13F-HR family sweep (11,213,806 shares, 12.07%, this file's Vanguard row) is used as the reliable current figure per the project's rule.
• Separately: an attempt to independently verify the proxy's cited 2025/2026 Schedule 13G/A filings for BlackRock (23 Apr 2025), Dodge & Cox (13 Feb 2026), Harris Associates (17 Feb 2026) and Vanguard (26 Mar 2026) via EDGAR full text search against WTW's own CUSIP (G96629103) in SC 13G/SC 13G/A/SC 13D/SC 13D/A forms found only 21 filings total across all time for this CUSIP, the newest dated 12 Nov 2024 (an MFS 13G/A); none of the specific 2025/2026-dated filings the proxy cites for BlackRock, Dodge & Cox, Harris Associates or Vanguard could be located that way. This is recorded as an unresolved discrepancy rather than investigated further, since the project's own rule is to prefer the fresh, independently-fetched Q2 2026 13F-HR figures over any 13G quoted in a proxy regardless, which is what this file does for all of the register rows above.
• Implied per-share price check: dividing each institutional 13F row's dollar value by its share count gives approximately $260.36 to $262.32 per share across all 12 institutional register rows (Vanguard's 8-entity sum, BlackRock, Dodge & Cox, Harris Associates, Artisan Partners, First Eagle, State Street, T. Rowe Price's 2-entity sum, Geode, FMR, Invesco), all dated 30 Jun 2026, EXCEPT Massachusetts Financial Services Co, whose filed total is inflated by one anomalous line (see that row's method_note); a tight, independent cross-check that every other row is the same instrument (CUSIP G96629103) at the same date and that the T. Rowe Price 'values in thousands' conversion was applied correctly. This $261 range is well below the live 19 Aug 2026 close of $335.46 used for market_cap_usd, consistent with roughly seven weeks of price appreciation (52-week range $240.61 to $352.78 per the same Nasdaq quote page) between the two dates.
• Self-gate computed from this final file: 13 register rows. No row has rolls_up_into set (the officers/director aggregate has no individually broken-out member rows in this file, since every named director and NEO held under 1% and only the group total is recorded), so every row counts at full value per the chart's own arithmetic. Total shares: 11,213,806 (Vanguard) + 8,314,002 (BlackRock) + 8,025,392 (Dodge & Cox) + 5,908,033 (Harris Associates) + 5,541,048 (Artisan Partners) + 5,491,383 (MFS) + 4,475,860 (First Eagle) + 4,315,443 (State Street) + 2,386,502 (T. Rowe Price) + 2,601,654 (Geode) + 2,215,896 (FMR) + 2,171,679 (Invesco) + 376,907 (officers/directors group) = 63,037,605 shares. Against shares_outstanding of 92,871,937, that is 67.88% of the company, well above the brief's expected 25% to 45% band (its stated ceiling for investigating a possible bug is 55%). This was investigated rather than shipped blind: (a) the implied-price check above shows 12 of 13 rows agree to within about 1% of each other, ruling out a values-in-thousands or share-class unit error on any row; (b) no holder CIK or name appears twice, and Capital Group (checked and found to hold zero across all 8 active registrants) is a note rather than a duplicate row; (c) cross-checked against data/registers/WTW.json, an independently sourced 31 Mar 2026 snapshot covering all 40 reported 13F holders of WTW, which sums to 77,307,218 shares, 83.24% of this file's shares_outstanding on its own, entirely independent of every figure re-derived in this file. WTW's institutional base is genuinely unusually concentrated among a small number of large, mostly value-oriented active managers (Dodge & Cox, Harris Associates, Artisan Partners, First Eagle and MFS together hold roughly 31% of the company on top of roughly 28% held by Vanguard, BlackRock, State Street and Geode combined), which is the verified cause of the high total, not a double-count or unit-mismatch bug.
• Market cap uses a live closing quote (Nasdaq API, $335.46, close of trading 19 Aug 2026) multiplied by the 27 Jul 2026 cover-page share count of 92,871,937; the two dates are about 3 weeks apart because no single source carries both a live price and a current share count on the same day. Disclosed rather than treated as precise.