A Free Market | Bridger Pennington

We are in an interesting time in history right now. These 3 companies, Vanguard, State Street, and BlackRock, pretty much control the world. BlackRock manages nearly $10 trillion investments, Vanguard $8 trillion, State Street $4 trillion, more than half of the combined value of the S&P 500. Those 3 companies control. Imagine if BlackRock wants to push a certain initiative, and it could be right or left initiative, whatever you don't like. Imagine they wanted to push it. They own coming up on 30 to 40% of shareholder votes on average in these companies. They go to the head of Disney and they say, Disney, you need to push this agenda or we're going to sell all of our stake out of your company. 12%, we're a 12% holder in your company, we're going to sell all of it. And you're the CEO of Disney, you're Bob Iger, what do you do? Well, you might comply a little bit. It's actually very frightening. What I want to have happen is it's decentralized, it's an actual true market. I believe us, this room should be launching funds so that we can have a free market and actually bid and can compete against each other.