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by dan-robertson
1296 days ago
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Have you looked into how vanguard/blackrock claim to decide these things? My understanding is that they used to just go with what the company management wanted and now contract the work out to some specialised firm that tells them the reasonable vote to make whenever they come up. There are a few of these specialised firms who are shared by the big investment funds. 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. |
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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.