Capital One is owned by its public shareholders, and its two largest reported holders are The Vanguard Group and BlackRock. The company's 2026 proxy statement, filed March 25, 2026, lists Vanguard at 10.2% and BlackRock at 7.1% of common stock, while founder and CEO Richard Fairbank holds less than 1%.
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Those percentages include shares that former Discover stockholders received when Capital One bought Discover in 2025. The sections below cover the largest holders, Fairbank's position and what the merger did to the shareholder base, each with its filing date.
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Capital One Financial Corporation is a publicly traded company owned by the investors who hold its common stock, ticker COF. No parent company or government controls it. Two asset managers are large enough to be named in its proxy, and the rest of the stock is spread across other institutions, employees and individual investors.
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The Capital One 2026 DEF 14A says that, based on Schedule 13D and 13G filings, the company is aware of only two holders of more than 5% of its common stock: Vanguard and BlackRock. It calculates their percentages against 625,102,271 shares outstanding on December 31, 2025.
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Capital One also owns its banking subsidiary outright. The proxy notes that every board nominee also sits on the board of Capital One, National Association, which it calls the company's principal operating subsidiary, per the 2026 proxy.
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The largest shareholders of Capital One are The Vanguard Group and BlackRock, in that order, according to the latest proxy. Both are index and asset managers holding shares on behalf of their funds and clients, so their stakes reflect investor money rather than a strategic bet by either firm.
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The 5% holder rows lean on older filings. The proxy footnotes say Vanguard's figure adds a February 13, 2024 Capital One filing to a Discover filing of the same date, and BlackRock's adds a January 29, 2024 Capital One filing to an April 24, 2025 Discover filing, with Discover shares converted at the merger ratio.
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Richard Fairbank owns less than one percent of Capital One, even though he founded the company and still runs it. His holding is the largest among the directors and named executives, and it mixes directly held stock, exercisable options and deferred stock units.
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The 2026 proxy ownership table shows Fairbank with 3,732,088 shares of common stock and 323,166 shares he may acquire within 60 days, for 4,055,254 shares of total beneficial ownership as of February 18, 2026. Adding 153,351 unvested stock-settled RSUs brings his total to 4,208,605.
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Part of that position is not held in his own name. A second proxy table lists 241,680 RSUs whose delivery is deferred until his employment ends, plus 49,212 shares held by, or in common with, a family member, trust or partnership.
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His control comes from his roles, not his stake. The proxy biography says Fairbank founded Capital One in 1987, has been CEO since the company's initial public offering in November 1994, and also serves as Chairman. He also chairs the board of Capital One, National Association, per the same filing.
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Yes. Capital One bought Discover Financial Services in an all-stock deal, so Discover stockholders became Capital One stockholders rather than being paid in cash. Discover the company no longer exists as a separate listed entity, and Discover Bank was folded into Capital One's national bank.
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Capital One's February 19, 2024 announcement described an all-stock transaction valued at $35.3 billion, under which Discover shareholders would receive 1.0192 Capital One shares for each Discover share. The release put that at a 26.6% premium to Discover's February 16, 2024 closing price of $110.49.
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The deal closed effective May 18, 2025, according to Capital One's Form 8-K filed May 19, 2025. That filing describes three steps: a merger subsidiary merged into Discover, Discover then merged into Capital One, and Discover Bank merged into Capital One, National Association.
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The completion press release says the Federal Reserve Board and the OCC approved the acquisition on April 18, 2025, the Delaware State Bank Commissioner approved it on December 18, 2024, and stockholders of both companies voted in favor on February 18, 2025.
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The board changed too. The same release says Capital One expanded its board from 12 to 15 and appointed three former Discover directors: Thomas G. Maheras, Michael Shepherd and Jennifer L. Wong.
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The merger widened Capital One's shareholder base by issuing new Capital One shares to every former Discover stockholder. Large index managers that already held both stocks ended up with bigger combined positions, which is why the proxy adds their Capital One and Discover filings together.
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The exchange ratio in that sketch comes from the May 2025 Form 8-K, and the combined stake method comes from footnote 1 of the 2026 proxy ownership table.
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The proxy shows how that math works for Vanguard. Its footnote reports 30,666,598 Capital One shares plus 32,330,796 Discover shares, which correspond to 32,951,547 Capital One shares after conversion. Those two amounts sum to the 63,618,145 shares in the table.
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Proxy ownership tables are the most reliable public source, but they are snapshots built from filings that can be months or years old. Readers should treat every percentage here as dated, and check newer Schedule 13G amendments before relying on any single figure.

No. Capital One acquired Discover, not the other way round. The deal closed effective May 18, 2025, per Capital One's Form 8-K.
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The Vanguard Group, with 63,618,145 shares or 10.2%, according to the March 2026 proxy.
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Richard Fairbank founded Capital One in 1987, according to the 2026 proxy statement. He remains Chairman and CEO.
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621,925,120 shares of common stock were outstanding on February 18, 2026, per the 2026 proxy.
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1.0192 Capital One shares for each Discover share, per Capital One's February 2024 announcement and the May 2025 8-K.
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All figures were taken from the SEC EDGAR filings listed below. No third-party aggregators or news summaries were used for any number.