The New Mandate Owners: Passive Asset Managers and The Decoupling of Corporate Ownership

By Carmel Shenkar, Eelke M. Heemskerk & Jan Fichtner –

A major shift toward passively managed index funds in recent years has led to the re-concentration of corporate ownership in the hands of just three large asset management firms, the Big Three: BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street. We propose that this trend has restructured ownership in capital markets. Adopting a contractual view to the corporate share, we re-define share holding and suggest that the New Mandate Owners in fact ho