This paper demonstrates that index funds and index providers have agency and thus responsibility for the companies contained within their financial products. As a growing number of institutional asset owners are divesting from coal assets, index funds are becoming the holders of last resort. The...

Using data collected from interviews with asset managers in Europe and the United States, this paper explores the tension between asset managers' fiduciary duty towards their ultimate investors and their own need to maintain a social license to operate. It documents shareholder attempts to...

This paper reviews the literature on the topic of shareholder responsibility, a concept that has received surprisingly little public attention. The challenge of the present-day investment chain, in which private individuals invest in capital markets through mutual funds and ETFs, is that it...

This conceptual paper investigates the reasons behind the recent increase in corporate engagement by institutional shareholders. Whilst the rise of institutional ownership is nothing new, what has changed is that large economies of scale in the fund management industry have resulted in ownership...

Drawing on data collected in interviews with investors and corporates in the United States and Europe, this paper sheds light on the motives behind shareholder engagement. It explains why index funds engage in corporate governance, despite their apparent lack of financial incentive to do so....