Why do people keep parroting these misunderstandings.
BlackRock, Vanguard, etc. are majority institutional holders because they are the brokerage houses / custodians that allow people to buy index funds/etfs through them.
It’s not that these companies themselves own the shares of all the companies in the world. They don’t.
And no, being custodians of index fund/etf that may have some kind of majority ownership in a company does not make BlackRock more influential of that company because they can’t decide to one day drop a company from the index because that’s not how indexes work.
BlackRock, Vanguard, etc. are majority institutional holders because they are the brokerage houses / custodians that allow people to buy index funds/etfs through them.
It’s not that these companies themselves own the shares of all the companies in the world. They don’t.
And no, being custodians of index fund/etf that may have some kind of majority ownership in a company does not make BlackRock more influential of that company because they can’t decide to one day drop a company from the index because that’s not how indexes work.
FML