Professor John Coates: The Problem of Twelve: When a Few Financial Institutions Control Everything

Professor John Coates

John F. Cogan, Jr. Professor of Law and Economics at

Harvard Law School

The Big Four index funds of Vanguard, State Street, Fidelity, and BlackRock control more than 25 percent of the votes of nearly all listed companies—a concentration of power that is unintended by consequential side-effect of financial success. Separately, large private equity complexes such as the Big Four of Apollo, Blackstone, Carlyle and KKR have amassed $2.7 trillion of assets, eroding the legitimacy and accountability of American capitalism, not by controlling public companies, but by taking them over entirely, and removing them from public scrutiny. This quiet, dramatic transformation is a sea change in how the American economy operates, with important social and political implications.

John Coates is the John F. Cogan, Jr. Professor of Law and Economics at Harvard Law School, where he also serves as Deputy Dean and Research Director of the Center on the Legal Profession. Professor Coates served as General Counsel and as Acting Director for the Division of Corporation Finance for the SEC. Before joining Harvard, he was a partner at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, specializing in financial institutions and M&A. At HLS and at HBS, he teaches corporate governance, M&A, finance, and related topics. He has testified before Congress, advised the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), the U.S. Department of Treasury, and the New York Stock Exchange, and served as the Chair of the Investor-as-Owner Subcommittee of the Investor Advisory Committee of the SEC.

Professor Coates’s most recent publication is The Problem of Twelve: When a Few Financial Institutions Control Everything

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