My point was more that the corporate behavior is geared towards pleasing fund managers rather than retirees or people with retirement accounts.
The fund manager decides where the money goes, so they’re the ones that need to be happy. Yes, legally both the fund manager and the company have a fiduciary duty to the literally millions of people with 401ks that put money into their stock or fund, but in practice it’s fund managers who matter.
If blackrock says that all things being equal, they’re going to preferentially invest in sustainable companies, suddenly companies have an incentive to make themselves sustainable by whatever metric blackrock is using. Likewise when an investment firm doesn’t reduce their stake in an insurance company for harming patient outcomes.
Non-voting means the CEO can be sued by them, but not replaced. It’s a different level of responsibility.
Yes, but they’re the cog that makes choices about where to invest the money.
People with 401Ks who don’t know where their money is invested certainly aren’t to blame for corporate evil, even if they, as a block, make up the vast majority of shareholders.
Saying the blame for putting money before lives lives not with the people who control how the money gets invested, but instead with the more than 50% of the country aged 24-64 who have a hands off account seems very strange to me.
Why do you think the investment managers aren’t to blame ?
My point was more that the corporate behavior is geared towards pleasing fund managers rather than retirees or people with retirement accounts.
The fund manager decides where the money goes, so they’re the ones that need to be happy. Yes, legally both the fund manager and the company have a fiduciary duty to the literally millions of people with 401ks that put money into their stock or fund, but in practice it’s fund managers who matter.
If blackrock says that all things being equal, they’re going to preferentially invest in sustainable companies, suddenly companies have an incentive to make themselves sustainable by whatever metric blackrock is using. Likewise when an investment firm doesn’t reduce their stake in an insurance company for harming patient outcomes.
Non-voting means the CEO can be sued by them, but not replaced. It’s a different level of responsibility.
I still think your barking up the wrong tree. They are one cog in the machine which demand fiduciary duty.
Yes, but they’re the cog that makes choices about where to invest the money.
People with 401Ks who don’t know where their money is invested certainly aren’t to blame for corporate evil, even if they, as a block, make up the vast majority of shareholders.
Saying the blame for putting money before lives lives not with the people who control how the money gets invested, but instead with the more than 50% of the country aged 24-64 who have a hands off account seems very strange to me.
Why do you think the investment managers aren’t to blame ?