Over the course of the last 70 years, asset managers⸺from activist hedge funds to the large passive index fund providers⸺have come to own the substantial majority of corporate equities in the United States, and have wielded that ownership to fundamentally reshape the economy. For most of American history, investing was simple: you purchased shares and left the operation of the company to management. If you were dissatisfied with the firm’s performance, you sold your shares. With the rise of asset managers, shareholders now attempt to directly change the companies in which they invest.

The New Power Brokers chronicles the economic, legal, and technological developments at the heart of this transformation and analyzes their collective impact. American companies today face increasing pressure from institutional investors to prioritize short-term financial results over longer-term investments in the development of their businesses. The Great Financial Crisis ushered in renewed calls for a New Deal-style, “stakeholder”-focused model of capitalism. But in the absence of the robust civic and regulatory institutional framework that undergirded the New Deal era economic order, new self-styled ESG funds and large global asset management firms have come to fill the vacuum and define the new stakeholder capitalism agenda to reflect their particular institutional interests and limitations. Pocketbook economic concerns were at the heart of the post-World War II liberal consensus. The new vanguards of stakeholder capitalism have let these type of concerns fall by the wayside and instead focused their attention on social and environmental topics in ways that have proven themselves to be ineffectual and harmful.

Sahand Moarefy takes us behind the scenes of these dramatic changes in the structure of our economy, providing fresh perspective on the panoply of issues and challenges posed by the rising influence of asset managers in corporate America.

Book Information
ISBN 9783031647321
Author Sahand Moarefy
Format Paperback
Page Count 200
Imprint Palgrave Macmillan
Publisher Springer International Publishing AG