Should companies care about climate change? Should they be vanquishing the gender pay gap? Should they be advancing human rights in their supply chains? And if we think they should - can we, as ordinary people, bring about these sorts of changes?
The answer is, technically, yes. In the UK, the majority of us now own shares in listed companies - whether that be through a stocks and shares ISA, a self-invested portfolio or a workplace pension scheme. What few people know is that every share comes with a vote in company decisions, over everything from executive pay to corporate strategy. The technology exists to allow us to vote - all we need to do is learn how to use it.
In Share Power, Merryn Somerset Webb, Editor-in-Chief of MoneyWeek, takes us deep into the world of corporate capitalism - from the privatisation of state-owned companies in the 1980s to the financial crash of 2008 and the growth of the modern multinational - to show us how capitalism went wrong and how, with six simple recommendations, every one of us now has the power to make it work for us.
