drew

Vanguard, iirc, takes the view that as its fiduciary duty to shareholders is to give them the market average, they should abstain from doing much activism. In other words, give them the market average, if Vanguard wasn't there.

Another question: is it actually possible to do this? Does the idea of "give my clients the market average, if my index fund wasn't there" even make logical sense when your index fund owns more of the stock than anyone else?

Moreover, when you own massive stakes in *every* company, what *would* activist investment even look like?

Obvious example, written about by Matt Levine. If you're a Pfizer shareholder, what do you want Pfizer to charge for the coronavirus vaccine?

Now if you're Carl Icahn in 1980, the answer is obvious: the amount that allows you to pay me the most. Therefore, route everyone's retirement savings to my account in the Cayman's (once they've raided it to pay for the vaccine).

The answer gets *weird*, though, when you see the world as Blackrock, which owns everything. Because your fund owns The Economy, the answer could be that every company is gonna bleed until everyone gets vaccinated, therefore Pfizer should go bankrupt providing vaccine for free

Or maybe that's not! the point is the answer becomes murky, but that it's far from obviously "route everyone's future pensions to my account"

Now, we've come a long way, but this is more or less why Blackrock would want someone like Brian Deese who had worked on economic and climate policy to go to work for them and make some decisions about sustainable investing.