https://innotechtoday.com/blackrock-is-the-biggest-company-youve-never-heard-of/

There’s our World Beast and it’s already controlling the numbers ie the money behind the scenes. It’s even replacing people.

The Biggest Antitrust Story You’ve Never Heard


The rise of institutional investors threatens competition, hurts consumers, and might qualify as a new kind of monopoly.

There’s no question that institutional investors are on a steady, inexorable rise: Since 1970, the share of the American stock market owned by large investment firms has grown from 7% to 70%. Collectively, the three biggest private funds — BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street — own more than any other single shareholder in 40% of the public companies in the U.S.

That means they are often the most influential shareholders of companies that are supposed to be in competition with each other: Microsoft and Apple. Citigroup and Wells Fargo. Walgreens and CVS. The list goes on.

Such “horizontal shareholding,” as it’s called, may erode competition, boost consumer prices, and possibly violate long-standing antitrust laws, says Fiona Scott Mortonopen in new window, an economist who recently visited Stanford Graduate School of Business as part of a program organized by the school’s Corporations and Society Initiative.

“You could argue that these mutual funds are a parallel to the trusts of the late 1800s that Congress passed laws to prevent,” says Scott Morton, a professor at Yale. An op-ed that she coauthored in the New York Times describes horizontal shareholding as “the great, but mostly unknown, antitrust story of our time.”

As major shareholders, institutional investors can have a strong influence over a given corporation’s business strategies, Scott Morton says. They have a say in a chief executive’s compensation package, and they often discuss business strategy with top-level managers.

Scott Morton points to two studies that show how horizontal shareholding has harmed consumers. One study found that airline ticket prices were higher by 10% because of such stock ownership, and another found that bank fees rose while interest rates dropped in the banking industry for the same reason.
A Legal Solution?

In the early 20th century, the public outcry against price fixing and excessive political influence created by American Tobacco, Standard Oil, and other monopolies spurred the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 and, 24 years later, the Clayton Act. Laws were passed to protect consumers against monopolies.


Quote
You could argue that these mutual funds are a parallel to the trusts of the late 1800s that Congress passed laws to prevent.
Attribution
Fiona Scott Morton

Scott Morton acknowledges that today it would be a challenge to apply antitrust statutes to horizontal shareholding because the evidence drawing a connection between shareholder activism and a softening of competition between rival companies is nascent, and understanding of the mechanism of harm is still being researched. Nonetheless, she contends, it’s clear that the laws would apply.

The Clayton Act “does not insist on proof of the precise mechanism by which prices are increased,” she writes in a paper coathured by University of Pennsylvania professor Herbert Hovenkamp. “The statute says nothing about intent or state of mind.”

In other words, antitrust enforcers would need to show only a causal correlation — rather than some kind of malign intent — linking horizontal shareholding to an increase in consumer costs. But even so, Scott Morton says, a dismantling of this type of shareholding through the legal system isn’t likely to happen.

“This is not going to be solved with one-off lawsuits,” she says. “Suppose you sue Vanguard, and now Vanguard is not allowed to hold airline stocks. How does Vanguard compete with Fidelity? So then you say, ‘OK, Fidelity, you can’t hold airline stocks either.’ But then, if the big mutual funds aren’t allowed to hold airline stocks, what does that do to the airline industry?

“At the end of the day, what we really need is a policy. We need to understand exactly where the harm comes from and build a policy for mutual funds that protects consumers from the lack of competition.”

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=does+blackrock+violate+antitrust+laws&t=ffab&df=y&ia=w...

This might be of further interest:


"The ESG Fiduciary Gap


The largest fiduciary breach and the most significant antitrust violation of our time may be hiding in plain sight: a small group of large asset managers are using a vast base of client funds to advocate for social agendas unrelated to those clients’ long-run financial interests.

The largest three U.S. passive asset managers—BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard, sometimes called “the Big Three”—manage approximately $20 trillion of capital on behalf of clients and exert staggering social influence on American companies. They collectively own more than 20% of the S&P 500, and, as of 2017, constitute the largest shareholder in almost 90% of those companies.

These asset managers are, first and foremost, fiduciaries for their clients. As fiduciaries, they owe their clients the duty of care and the duty of loyalty. These duties are taken from trust law, and center around a fundamental principle called the “sole interest rule.” As explained in the Restatement (Third) of Trusts, the “sole interest rule” requires fiduciaries to act “solely” and “exclusively” in the interest of the persons to whom their fiduciary duties are owed.

Under the sole interest rule, asset managers cannot be influenced by their own interests, by the interests of third-party “stakeholders,” by “social” objectives, or by any motives other than what’s best for their clients. Accordingly, the Uniform Prudent Investor Act makes clear that “[n]o form of so-called ‘social investing’” is lawful “if the investment activity entails sacrificing the interests of trust beneficiaries . . . in favor of . . . the particular social cause.”

Despite this bedrock principle, the Big Three are all promoting the ESG agenda rather than focusing on clients’ interests alone. BlackRock, for example, is the world’s largest asset manager, and has made a “firmwide commitment to integrate ESG information into investment processes across . . . all of [its] investment divisions and investment teams.” And it has made good on this promise. It has used its financial clout to push American companies to cut their carbon emissions, conduct racial equity audits, restrict legal gun sales, commit to net zero, limit the number of white men on their boards, and more. Vanguard and State Street have also jumped on board, pledging fealty to ESG principles and leveraging their clients’ shares in much the same way. Where there was once a “sole interest,” there now are many.

Antitrust issues also abound. BlackRock is currently under investigation for antitrust violations precisely because of its coordinated ESG activism through groups like Climate Action 100+, Net Zero Asset Managers, and Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero. Vanguard and State Street are members of many of the same groups. In fact, until recently, as Arizona’s Attorney General has observed, “Wall Street banks and money managers [were] bragging about their coordinated efforts to choke off investment in energy.”

U.S. antitrust statutes are broad by design. They forbid competitors from entering into any agreement with the purpose or likely effect of reducing supply in a relevant market. Here, through these groups, BlackRock is cooperating with its competitors to make concerted efforts to decrease marketwide output in fossil fuels. That is no secret; it is the very purpose of these organizations. Net Zero Asset Managers, for example, makes clear that it has an “expectation of signatories” like BlackRock to force a “rapid phase out of fossil fuel[s],” including by, for example, refusing to finance new coal projects.

If the CEOs of Exxon, Chevron, and Shell decided to cut gas production and prices then spiked, the DOJ Antitrust Division would be making arrests. But when the Big Three pressure them to do the same thing, it is praised as “ESG.”

ESG investing is also rife with conflicts of interest. While BlackRock pressures U.S. companies like Exxon and Chevron to reduce oil production to fight climate change, BlackRock remains a large shareholder of foreign firms like PetroChina without making similar demands abroad. While BlackRock claims everything it does is to benefit its clients, it lobbied the U.S. government for China-friendly policies and urged investors to triple their assets allocated to Chinese companies at precisely the moment that BlackRock was seeking the CCP’s approval to launch mutual funds in the country.

State actors are now advancing policy solutions to these problems, but market problems demand market solutions first. That’s why I founded Strive Asset Management this year. Strive aims to offer a new choice in the marketplace that advocates for companies to focus exclusively on delivering excellent products and services to their customers to maximize shareholder value, without advancing unrelated social or political agendas.

To that end, I recently wrote letters to the boards of Apple, Disney and Chevron questioning their decisions to embrace ESG agendas that don’t appear to advance business goals—including Apple’s racial equity audit, Chevron’s carbon emissions caps and Disney’s opposition to Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Act. ESG proponents often argue that such practices are in the “long-run interests” of stockholders, but they’re not. In each case, the groups that advanced these policies were clear that their primary motivations were nonpecuniary. ...

A little bit more on Fink...

This Fink guy (who initiated and still controls Blackrock) is starting to sound like a bit of an Anti Christ to me.

From what I’ve been able to deduce ...he makes a lot of money out of guns and war. The resultant profits of war feed his organizational structure ensuring it continues to grow and retain its reputation as a monopolistic monolithic force to be reckoned with.

Also :

1. Fink sits/advises on this rather interesting council.

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) an American think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy and international relations.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_on_Foreign_Relations

2. Fink also sits/advises on this other interesting council too.

World Economic Forum

The Forum suggests that a globalised world is best managed by a self-selected coalition of multinational corporations, governments and civil society organizations (CSOs),which it expresses through initiatives like the "Great Reset" and the "Global Redesign".

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Economic_Forum

Isn’t it strange ... how this Fink guy has spent most of his 70 yrs on this planet devising schemes and controlling covert machinations to amass trillions so as to then convert that $$ into “political power and influence”.

Yet for all such effort and energy NOTHING will change his appointment with Death. Nor will it change his end. He will one day find himself lying in this ⚰️ 👈 a small wooden box hiding in a small hole and covered by dirt.

How I see Fink?

This man has a lot to answer for.

1. He’s a rabid Democrat who advises Biden on war/conflict. He is in Biden’s ear. He can and has financed war. He’s provided the weaponry for war. He’s derived profits from war.

2. He has been responsible for STATING on behalf of his Blackrock group that he and the Group are committed to being environmentally responsible. This happened WHILST he was busy organising the necessary procedures to finance large scale deforestation projects and fossil fuel ventures from which he amassed huge windfalls. i