Sky Blog
“If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.” This maxim from Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s classic novel, The Leopard, captures the central insight of our new article. In the novel, a Sicilian aristocrat watches …
For over a decade, the narrative of corporate governance was focused on the concentration of power. The “Big Three”asset managers – BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street – along with the two dominant proxy advisers, ISS and Glass Lewis, were seen …
On September 15, 2025, Elon Musk filed a disclosure with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) indicating that he had acquired approximately 2.57 million shares of Tesla Inc. in open-market transactions on September 12, at a cost of nearly …
Robust shareholder engagement continues to be a critical component of corporate governance, as well as a key element of shareholder activism preparedness. Proactively maintaining a dialogue with the company’s largest shareholders allows the company to establish credibility, lay out its …
In recent years, legal scholars and economists have debated whether the rise of “common ownership” by large institutional investors dampens competition. The concern is that when asset managers such as the Big Three – BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street – …
Institutional investors such as mutual funds, pension funds, and exchange traded funds (ETFs) play a prominent role in today’s economy. According to the CFA Institute, institutional investors now hold over $70 trillion in investable assets and thus wield immense influence …
In the corporate governance landscape, the influence of passive index funds and common ownership has become a focus of scholarly and public debate. As the largest asset management firms in the world, the Big Three (BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street …
The growth and concentration of the investment management industry has captivated the scholarly community. Recent scholarship has focused on the “Big Three” investment managers — Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street Global Advisors — and charted their rapid accumulation of assets …
Large asset managers play an outsized role in the corporate governance of the largest U.S. public firms. The Big Three (BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street) collectively manage trillions of dollars of assets and own about a fifth of the average …
With (minority) shares now concentrated in the hands of a relatively small number of institutions, institutional investors are expected to play an ever-increasing role in the governance of listed companies worldwide. However, it is uncertain whether institutional investors can actually …
Sign up for an investment account, and you will likely be presented with a dizzying range of investment products. The industry caters to investors with different risk appetites, savings pots, time horizons, ESG outlooks, religious commitments, and more. In some …
On March 7, 2017, the eve of International Women’s Day, State Street Global Advisors initiated its “Fearless Girl” campaign, an effort to increase the number of female directors on the boards of its portfolio companies.[1]According to State Street, …
The tremendous growth of institutional investors, particularly large passive funds, has drawn attention to their role in corporate governance. Major investment advisers such as BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street are among the largest shareholders in many publicly traded firms and …
Within the world of corporate governance, there has hardly been a more important recent development than the rise of the Big Three asset managers — Vanguard, State Street Global Advisors, and BlackRock. Due to the popularity of index funds and …
What is the effect of stock indexing on information arbitrage and the efficacy of the price discovery process? Forty-five years after John C. Bogle, the Vanguard Group founder, launched the world’s first index mutual fund, and 30 years after the …
“Common Ownership” arises when shareholders hold substantial stakes in different firms that impose externalities on each other, and it challenges the assumption that firms act to maximize their own profits. While firm decisions are ordinarily made by its board of …
The corporation’s role in society is in flux. Previous generations saw government as an important bulwark against corporate harm. Today, by contrast, corporate America is thought to be a solution to government dysfunction around issues like inequality and the environment. …
Last year, major investors took unprecedented steps through engagement efforts and proxy voting to demonstrate their commitment to addressing the climate transition and board and workforce diversity and inclusion, with focus given to disclosure and reporting of key ESG metrics …
Gender diversity in the boardroom and the C-suite is one of the most contentious topics in corporate governance. Proponents of greater diversity argue that the lack of women directors and top executives is a missed opportunity and that increasing their …
Mutual funds and exchange-traded funds are the cornerstone of many Americans’ investment and retirement plans. (For simplicity, we refer to all these investments as “mutual funds.”) Collectively, investment companies such as BlackRock, Fidelity, State Street, and Vanguard hold more than …