Do asset issuers have an advantage when trading their own assets considering that they have access to shareholder lists?
As an asset issuer I can see which email address owns how many shares. Also, when a trade occurs on one of my assets I can work out which email address sold and which email address bought. In many cases those email addresses reveal the actual identity of who owns/traded the shares. There's very limited scope for somehow abusing that information in trading - but it definitely CAN be abused by revealing who holds how many shares when that's not information the asset issuer should disclose. It's the disclosure that's the problem more than actually having the information.
The real area in which an asset issuer can get an advantage trading their own assets has nothing to do with knowing who owns what shares - it's from insider-trading. i.e. by buying and selling your own shares based on information that other investors don't have (as you haven't disclosed it yet). That problem is one which exists on any asset where the price/value of the share includes things which investors other than the asset issuer can't determine the value of.
That said I'd personallly prefer if asset issuers did NOT have the ability to identify investors. I've personally had the situation where an asset issuer decided to disclose that my fund held shares in their asset - information they had no right to release (only time any such release should be made is in response to a claim of ownership of shares by someone). I've also a few times had situations where I believe asset issuers reacted to my orders on the market in a way they couldn't have done if they didn't know it was my orders.
Are the minor issues arising from asset issuers having the email addresses compensated for by the asset issuers' ability to pick up running the asset quickly in the event BTC.CO/LTC-GLobal were to vanish (and having the ability to move platforms quickly without needing burnside's permission)? Probably so -it's certainly better than Bitfunder's method where EVERYONE can correlate the various holdings of a BTC address (something which could VERY easily have been avoided whilst delivering the same benefits) but the issuer can't easily identify shareholders if they need to.
If you're concerned about asset issuers abusing your trust then them knowing how many shares you have is a pretty minor issue compared to the other things they can do without needing that knowledge : such as just running off with your funds for one thing.