Share Power

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.