Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Jan 13 (I)

choi

(1) David McLaughlin and Annie Massa with Aoife White, Denise Cochran and Bruce Johnson, The Great Index Fund Takeover.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/f ... index-fund-takeover

The first 4 ½ paragraphs:

"If you hold a stock market index fund, congratulations. The S&P 500’s total return was a thumping 31.5% in 2019, and a fund that passively tracks that benchmark delivered almost all those gains, minus a tiny fee—perhaps just 0.04% of assets. Now here’s something you probably weren’t thinking about when you clicked on the box to choose an index fund in your 401(k) or IRA: You were also part of one of the biggest shifts in corporate power in a generation.

"The index fund is one of a handful of unambiguously beneficial financial innovations. Before it caught on, investors routinely paid sky-high fees to active stockpickers who often delivered subpar returns. The near-universal popularity of index funds puts them up there with Social Security, Stevie Wonder, and streaming TV.

"Indexing also has been a runaway success for some fund companies. The largest asset manager in the world, BlackRock Inc., best known for its iShares brand of exchange-traded index funds, has $7 trillion under management. Index pioneer Vanguard Group Inc. has $5.6 trillion. The No. 3 indexer, State Street Corp., manages $2.9 trillion. These companies also run active funds, but together they hold about 80% of all indexed money. They’ve come to be known as the Big Three.

"Their success has had a weird and unintended consequence. As millions of investors have done the most sensible thing financially, they’ve also concentrated shareholder power in the Big Three. Some 22% of the shares of the typical S&P 500 company sits in their portfolios, up from 13.5% in 2008. Their power is probably greater, given that many stockholders don’t bother to vote their shares.

"BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street combined own 18% of Apple Inc.’s shares, up from 7% at the end of 2009. Of the four largest U.S. banks, the fund companies together own 20% of Citigroup, 18% of Bank of America, 19% of JPMorgan Chase, and 19% of Wells Fargo. The phenomenon can be even more pronounced for smaller companies.

Note:
(a)
(i) This report is print runs six pages (including one that has no text but a graphic). There is no need to read the rest.
(ii) Print and the online version are identical.
(b) summary underneath the title in print: The Big Three -- BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street --may be the most important players in corporate America. Whether they like it or not


(2) Shira Ovide, Cable Lost -- But Streamers Aren't Celebrating Yet.

The first 2 1/2 paragraphs:

"People have been talking about the streaming era for so long that it's hard to imagine the tipping point just happened. In 2019 the rate of Americans quitting cable went from steady slide to avalanche. TV ratings [such as by Nielsen] continued to tumble, The three biggest entertainment titans made the jump into original streaming video, as did Apple Inc.

"It's time to really, truly declare that streaming won. Winning, though, has never looked so bad.

"No major subscription provider generates reliable profits from streaming video. The king, Netflix Inc, has borrowed #13 billion as the cash it spends on programming exceeds the fees it gets from subscription. (Netflix is profitable on a noncash basis [I am clueless what his means]). Walt Disney Co says that Hulu, which it took over last year, won't turn a profit until 2023 or later. * * *  

Note:
(a) There is no need to read the rest.
(b) Shira is female given name in Hebrew (שירה), which means
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/שירה
("singing (the act, practice, or skill of singing)" )

, but usually is said to be mean "song."
(c) This essay is very, very short, providing no statistics. The quotation above is about half of the length of the whole essay.
(d) The word "programming" is British English, because the noun and verb in UK is programme
https://www.lexico.com/definition/programme
(verb: "programmes, programming, programmed; US programs, programing, programed")
(e)
(i) Hulu
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hulu
(in 2007 "was initially established as a joint venture between News Corporation and NBC Universal, Providence Equity Partnerssection"/ headquarters Samta Monica, Calif;  1 Name: "It [hulu] literally translates to 'gourd' ")

Quote: "In March 2019, Disney acquired 21st Century Fox, giving it a 60% majority stake in Hulu. AT&T (which acquired Time Warner in 2018) sold back its roughly 10% stake the following month. Comcast, the only other shareholder, announced on May 14, 2019, that it had agreed to cede its control to Disney, and reached an agreement for Disney to purchase its 33% stake in the company as early as 2024.

(ii) translate (vi): "to practice translation or make a translation
also : to admit of or be adaptable to translation  <a word that doesn't translate easily>"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/translate