In Vanguards case, that ownership is a direct pass through to the people buying into those indexes. Do the ultimate ownership is dispersed.
Do you have any point other than “big index funds own the correct percentage of the market they index?”
This is not rocket science.
Robyn Denholm came from Jupiter networks, Vanguard owns ~11%.
James Murdoch came from Fox. Vanguard owns ~7%.
Joe Gebbia was an Airbnb founder, vanguard owns ~6%.
Kathleen Wilson-Thompson is a long time Walgreens exec, Vanguard owns ~7%
So no, that doesn’t seem to be the difference.
On the companies I had a look at, vanguard + blackrock is usually ~30% and both are usually the biggest share holders.
For instance, amazon, vanguard + blackrock are not in control because, one, there is the azur fund which has a bigger part, two, JB has a massive part of the shares, JB is explicitely in control here.
What I could read from the net vanguard and blackrock are still small in tesla compared to musk, so until he sells to them most of his shares, he is still the capitain on board. In the end, we cannot tell if musk is one of them.
I don’t think blackrock/vanguard exercise much influence. Do they even meet with management? But each year, Larry Fink writes a letter to companies black rock holds saying they should be sustainable or whatever. But I don’t think there are consequences for the companies for ignoring the letter. Big funds are mostly passive and so just follow their formula. S&P surely have a bigger influence on vanguard’s holdings by what they choose to include in their indexes.
But I do weakly find the ‘index funds reduce competition’ theory plausible. Eg in 2020, Pfizer’s big investors probably most wanted Pfizer to cooperate with competitors to help end covid, causing share prices everywhere to recover, rather than working to get a bigger share of the covid vaccine pie.
It’s not a question that Vanguard engaged with boards of the companies they interact with and it’s a pretty commonly cited concern in corporate governance circles. So much so that the big index funds are piloting giving their votes to fund holders.
The conspiracy theory issue here is that the poster is a) expressing something much more nefarious by implying Starbucks debt is part of a plot by vanguard/Blackrock b) setting up Musk as a white knight fighting these nefarious forces and c) citing fabrications as facts to back up the claims, then devolving to much less striking claims (“big shareholders have influence”) when called on it.
This has all the hallmarks of a classic conspiracy theory.
