Archive for January 16th, 2020
The Big Three funds own 22% of S&P 500 companies?
The Big Three are the most important players in corporate America. Whether they like it or not.⠀
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● The success of index funds has had a weird and unintended consequence. As millions of investors have done the most sensible thing financially, they’ve also concentrated shareholder power in the Big Three.
Some 22% of the shares of the typical S&P 500 company sits in their portfolios, up from 13.5% in 2008.
Their power is probably greater, given that many stockholders don’t bother to vote their shares.⠀
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● BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street combined own 18% of Apple Inc.’s shares, up from 7% at the end of 2009. Of the four largest U.S. banks, the fund companies together own 20% of Citigroup, 18% of Bank of America, 19% of JPMorgan Chase, and 19% of Wells Fargo.
The phenomenon can be even more pronounced for smaller companies.
The Big Three own 28% of Cabot Microelectronics Corp., an Aurora, Ill., seller of materials to semiconductor manufacturers that has a market value of $4 billion.⠀
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● The index funds in your piggy bank are great investments. But at what cost? Read more by clicking the link in our bio, and follow @businessweek for more.
Of the $3.6 trillion-worth of capital managed by hedge funds globally, $340bn is handled in and around Greenwich, Connecticut.
Greenwich is a small town with one of America’s greatest concentrations of wealth. It was a powerhouse of 20th-century finance, thanks to low taxes.
Among today’s residents are Ray Dalio of Bridgewater, the world’s most successful hedge fund, Tom Brady, an American footballer, and his wife, Gisele Bündchen, a Brazilian supermodel.
Multiple crisis in Lebanon: Afterward of the mass upheaval
A country in such a multiple crisis is no longer a country at all: It’s a collection of futile individuals, considering themselves bigger than institutions, acting like cynical clowns on TV shows, each of whom is looking for personal cover and passing the buck from one to the other.
Few saw the warning signs and now we are in the middle of the tragedy.
The few coming months will be very complicated but what about the afterward of the few coming months, what about the post-disaster era?
If we don’t reimagine another future, if we don’t rethink the meaning of economic, political, ecological, financial and social practices in the wake of the crisis and beyond,
if we don’t reconsider existing values and endorse new ones,
if we don’t agree together and look to implement a new project for Lebanon, i
f we don’t unite (against the sectarian “leaders” and the Ponzi scheme financial system), then we will be doomed to relive the pre-mass upheaval (7iraal) situation.
Can’t go on with business as usual, this pre-disaster with the ones who fabricated the disaster, taking advantage of it and privatizing whole swathes of activities of general interest in an extremely brutalized and impoverished society at bargain prices.
Another economy is possible, another democracy is possible, another social contract is possible,
Another “vivre-ensemble” is possible, another leadership is possible, another governance is possible, and alternative values must be endorsed.
The value of life over the value of money; the citizenship over clientelism; the sovereignty of the state over the joint-violence of illegal arms and money;
The ethical banking over bank predation; the rights of depositors over the profitability of banks;
the responsible regulation by governments over the non-rule short-term financial speculation, led by greed rather than long-term profit-making, that took the overall Lebanese economy to the brink of catastrophe.
Meanwhile, an independent crisis management team is needed to damage control and we must go on with the revolt.
Adonis Diaries 