The short answer is yes. Shareholders are the corporation’s owners, and share ownership is fundamental to corporate law. Shareholders do not own individual assets or specific items of corporate property, but they own a percentage of the entire business based on the percentage of shares they own compared to the total number of issued shares. Shareholders are the ones who elect or appoint directors. In a small company, the shareholders are often the same people as the directors and the same people as the officers. They wear different hats, so to speak.
Failure to establish shareholders could be used as evidence that the corporation is not organized correctly, which, in turn, could jeopardize the liability protection provided by the corporate form.