But the biggest stockholders are the mutual funds such as Fidelity and Vanguard.

Reader comment on: Obama's Financial 'Reform' Speech
in response to reader comment: Stockholders should have more say in companies

Submitted by Lyle (United States), Apr 23, 2010 00:42

Actually that's simple most state funds hold their money thru advisors, then just let the advisors vote. Note that if you go and look at large holders the big holders are vanguard, state street, blackrock, bank of new york mellon. (this is for GE). the same applies to CVX. No state pension fund is listed as a top investor. A good bit of this is exercised thru S&P 500 index funds, Vanguards total stockmarket and various 500 index funds hold 2.6% of CVX for example. Basically given the contents of the funds you could say that vanguard directly controls 2.6% of the us industrial base. However I would modify how votes are counted to make them secret to companies, so that fund companies can avoid being conflicted between the good of the fund holder and the desire to become a 401 k custodian.

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