Most of those HSBC and JP Morgan-type shareholders that are listed are not actually on their "own account" but are instead Trustee (or Nominee) entities that are operated by the banks but the beneficiaries of those Trustee/Nominee entities are a multitude of other investors (both corporations and wealthy individuals) so it's not really true to say there are lots of corporate cross-shareholdings. What is true is that it's mostly the same investors investing in all the companies simply 'cos 98% of the wealth is owned by 2% of the population...or whatever the statistic is.

See the way to play Monopoly is to buy absolutely everything you land on. Mortgage what you own, whatever it takes. But buy everything. It was designed to show how monopolies work, and was a bit of a stab at capitalism (but I'll argue the state can be a monopoly too).

I think the crux of that article was:

This argument is often countered by stating that HSBC, J.P. Morgan and Citibank are only investing on behalf of small investors. What is of issue here is control and the prerogative of the funds to appoint a director to the board of their choice, not the investors.

It's an interesting predicament. They truly are investing on behalf of many small investors, but somebody has to be a director.

What's the solution? Is one required? If the goal of a company is to maximise profit then why would having an experienced director on a board be a negative? Or is the author hinting at collusion, corruption, and a lowering of standards for all as a result? The company as psychopath.

As usual there is absolutely no action suggested. It's all just raising awareness. 'Like' this. Lots of question marks and nothing else. The only message I took from the occupy movement, for example, was "Greed is bad. Give us more." The irony was almost everyone of them was in the 1% of the world and were having the same effect down the line as the people above them they were rallying against.

well.........

Since Australia is an American registered company,

I guess you just look up who the owner of the company is?


stephen

evlPanda said...
See the way to play Monopoly is to buy absolutely everything you land on. Mortgage what you own, whatever it takes. But buy everything. It was designed to show how monopolies work, and was a bit of a stab at capitalism (but I'll argue the state can be a monopoly too).

I think the crux of that article was:

This argument is often countered by stating that HSBC, J.P. Morgan and Citibank are only investing on behalf of small investors. What is of issue here is control and the prerogative of the funds to appoint a director to the board of their choice, not the investors.

It's an interesting predicament. They truly are investing on behalf of many small investors, but somebody has to be a director.

What's the solution? Is one required? If the goal of a company is to maximise profit then why would having an experienced director on a board be a negative? Or is the author hinting at collusion, corruption, and a lowering of standards for all as a result? The company as psychopath.

As usual there is absolutely no action suggested. It's all just raising awareness. 'Like' this. Lots of question marks and nothing else. The only message I took from the occupy movement, for example, was "Greed is bad. Give us more." The irony was almost everyone of them was in the 1% of the world and were having the same effect down the line as the people above them they were rallying against.

Good points, but you have to give credit to the fact that the "investigated" the details in the article, rather than just writing an opinion piece like you usually see in mainstream media.

Nothing wrong with raising "awareness", writers don't have to come up with the answers first, the public have to do some of the legwork in debate....