How does it work with institutional investors? Like, do Vanguard and Blackrock get to assign a board member each to serve their interests indirectly? Perhaps that explains why.
https://corporate.vanguard.com/content/corporatesite/us/en/c...
>We vote in accordance with these governance principles to represent the long-term interests of Vanguard fund investors.
would imply that they may vote in ways that forward these leftist initiatives. However, there is no evidence to show that their votes on boards have any agenda beyond profit-maximization.
[0]https://www.blackrock.com/corporate/about-us/diversity-equit...
https://www.sierraclub.org/press-releases/2020/01/blackrock-...
It’s not “left wing” but rather an effective co-opting of the left wing. It steers the conversation to being about the skin color of the board members and executives and away from the concentrated ownership of corporate shares.
Sometimes they pass questions on to the shareholders of the funds, which everyone ignores.
Which means that people like me, who vote every time, apparently are reasonably influential.
If Twitter goes down, you think someone is going to say "oh no, you shouldn't have bought all the stocks"?
Well, probably, because people will say anything.
Whether that’s good or bad is up for debate, but the Vangaurds of the world certainly have interests beyond buying and holding all the stocks.
I wish they did meaningfully push companies to implement profit incompatible policies-- then at least they'd be interesting to short.
It suggests some substantial motivation that I'm not sure ESG policies rise to the level of.
Individuals working for Vanguard have some motivation to talk about ESG and go through the motions.
But at the end of the day, if they buy all the stocks, and if their customers understand that they buy all the stocks, then how can ESG considerations make a meaningful difference in the overall job? It seems way too constrained.