If you think that some computer geek is the richest person in the world then you are stupid

If you think that some computer geek is the richest person in the world then you are stupid

Who actually owns the world?

You probably might think that this might be a conspiracy theory or something like that but the information I am going to provide you is easily available on yahoo finance

So let’s start

Here is the list of biggest corporations by market cap

So first one is Apple and we go to Yahoo finance to see who are the main shareholders of Apple

As you can see the largest shareholders of Apple are Vanguard Group, Blackrock, State Street Corporation, FMR, Berkshire, Price (T.Rowe) Associates

Out of this list the most famous one is Berkshire, we now that Warren Buffet has to do a lot with that company. Now let’s go the second company, Alphabet

Same old palls again, so let’s go to the next one, to Microsoft. We already know by the common perception that Gates has to be the major shareholder since he is the richest men in the world at this point.

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/MSFT/holders?p=MSFT

This is are direct holders, and the reason I haven’t showed the direct holders for the above two companies because they were just so small in percentage that I didn’t find it worthwhile putting it here. However in the case of Microsoft Gates has some large shares compared to other direct holders but unfortunately Yahoo finance does not give the percentage of how much the direct holders have so we have to manually calculate this. And it is pretty easy to do, we just need to divide the shares of William by the total shares outstanding so 166 million shares divided by 7.2 billion shares outstanding which gives us 2.3% or roughly 13 billion USD out of 560 billion USD which is what all of Microsoft is forth (checked at 15.08.2017). So now let’s see the other shareholders of Microsoft

Oh, same old pals again. Now you can keep going on that list and to the fortune 500 and you will see roughly the same old guys. So now just to give you a clue, only from these three companies, Microsoft, Apple and Alphabet we can calculate Blackrock Inc.’s shares equal in value to 90 billion USD, just a little more than what our friend Gates has. Now Blackrock owns equity in any company basically. So now you are thinking so these 10 or 15 companies are actually the really owners of all companies… but don’t get hasty, we first have to check who owns these companies. So let’s start with Blackrock Inc.

http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/blk/ownership-summary

So Blackrock is actually owned by,

23% - PNC Financial Services Group

5.9% Norges Bank

5.8% Vanguard Group

Oh wait, so now Vanguard group who was on top of the list of owners for the above showed Apple, Alphabet and Microsoft actually owns 5.8% of Blackrock who was second on the list!? Ok, so now let’s see who owns PNC Financial Services Group, can you guess who we are going to see on the list?

Yes, vanguard again but not only, Blackrock also on the list, which is really strange because it looks like it actually owns the shares of the company (PNC) which owns the shares of Blackrock. But look on the other companies on the list. Wellington Management Company and below we see the Vanguard/Wellington Fund, doesn’t the names rhyme? But don’t forget other companies, State Street Corporation, FMR, Capital World Investors which as we showed above was on the list of Apple, Microsoft and Alphabet holders. You can look further at other companies and you will eventually figure out that Blackrock is actually owned by Vanguard.

Now we return to FMR and State Street Inc who are usually on the top 10 when it comes to the list of owners of fortune 500. So who owns FMR and State Street Inc. So State street is owned by once again Vanguard and Blackrock and by other Vanguard owned companies.

Now when it comes to FMR, it is rather hard to find. Some sources say that 25% is owned by Abigail Johnson while others state Petyr Lynch has significant ownership. But whatever might the case, it is clear that family ownership of Johnsons is no less than 49% and Lynch probably owns somewhere between 10-15%. But if you keep looking, you will find that the biggest player is Vanguard Group and it owns through multilayer company sets at least 40% of fortune 500. So basically Vanguard makes the decision when it comes to running the companies and that includes electing the board of directors. And now who owns Vanguard? It says that since it is a mutual fund it is owned by the shareholders but unfortunately we do know now who are those shareholders are. But I know one thing, if you go and become a shareholder in Vanguard group, you don’t get to vote like you would if you were a shareholder in Apple. So basically, even the owners of Vanguard were common people, which is highly unlikely, then who is making the decisions if not the shareholders of Vanguard? These questions of course I can not answer. But, I will tell you a one funny joke… go to youtube and type Vanguard and see what comes up… you will not find even a single video on the largest company of the world.

Now we have to be fair on several points

Although Vanguard owns the largest stakes in all of the world’s largest companies including Toyota and Samsung, it does not however have any ownership in Chinese companies since they are mostly state owned. Also, they do not have large investments in Russian market unless they are acting so through other intermediaries which unfortunately I did not have the time to look into. But if there were any intermediary in the Russian market I would say Usmanov is one of them since he did lots of offshore business with the European market and he probably had some hand in it.

There is also one very interesting company on the list and it is Capital World Investors. They are American company as all of them are, and have stakes in several companies but their assets are mostly concentrated in Germany. They have large stakes in many German companies including Volkswagen. Now, the fact that Vanguard is the largest bad boy there is no question. But Capital World Investors is a very interesting one, although the ownership is not disclosed, yet the fact that they are in the German Market is very interesting to me. Well now I will tell you a theory which I am only contemplating and have no evident proof to back it up but still so here it goes.

So Hitler born in 1889, returns from serving in the world war I in 1918 (29 years old). Later he can’t stay in the regular army because he just couldn’t make the simple list and is discharged from the army in 1920 (31 years old) and the same year he goes full time to the Workers party which he year later himself renames to Nazy Party and becomes its leader (32 years old). Now, the guy who couldn’t get into the Vienna school of arts, who got dispelled from the Army, in one year becomes the leader of a whole party. Well, that might be possible, let’s keep going. In 1924 he goes to prison for treason for 5 years and released in 1925 (34 years old). And in 1929 Nazi party comes to power (40 years old). And the when the whole world was in great depression, including Germany, Hitler manages to secretly form the largest army and just attack and conquer everyone except Russians but never attacks Switzerland for some reason. Now,  I will not make any theories here, I just laid out what happened.

Now the question is it a good or a bad thing that one or several companies hold the world power? I think it is a pretty good since they have been doing rather a good job of it compared to the history of humans. Besides, would we want some arab, chinese or russian guys to take over google? So the next question which arises and the one which i cannot answer is how long these companies have existed. Vanguard was established in 1975. But I am sure that it existed beforehand by some other means. My guess would be that these powers existed from way before, probably coming to rise during Napoleon era but have gained their true supremacy after world war II. Powerful palls who were scattered all over the world have decided to make America their home!