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WHO are the shady, money-grubbing profiteers who own the multinational
companies that pollute rivers, damage the environment, exploit the poor, and
invent dubious drugs or risky genetically manipulated organisms? Or who back
pointless inventions while the really big one gets away? Well, er, it’s probably
me and you—or if you’re very young, your parents.

Can’t be true, I hear you say. But have you any idea how much our collective
savings are worth? Do you know which companies your pensions and savings are
invested in? Do you tell your trustees or savings companies about the
scientific, social or environmental impact of these firms’ business and research
operations?

Of course it’s not easy. Savers and their fund managers rarely communicate,
except in times of commercial crisis. Rival funds almost never get together to
influence company policy, nor is there any database to allow you to find out
which other funds are invested in the firms in which you have a stake. So we
fellow “owners” never meet to discuss what action might be taken to alert
management to scientific opportunities and risks or, if necessary, to punish
companies.

Remember, we’re talking about large amounts of lolly here. In Britain, 52 per
cent of the stock market is “owned” by domestic small savers, either through
their pension schemes or holdings in commercial savings accounts. That’s
£1500 billion at the last count. Small savers from overseas own another 10
per cent or so, and British savers’ funds correspondingly “own” substantial
stock abroad.

These holdings also represent a controlling influence over private sector
science and technology spending, worth as much as £15 billion per
annum—more than half the total research and development spending in
Britain.

Some of this will be wisely invested but a lot won’t. And you’re unlikely to
find out whether your savings have been poured into a long-scrapped software
package for a forgotten Internet start-up or a new, cruelly efficient Daisy
Cutter bomb while the inventor of next year’s Dyson or clockwork radio is
wasting their genius dodging bankruptcy.

We badly need some coordinated and accessible means of finding out who’s
sticking our money where, what kind of outfits they’re backing, and how we
savers can make a difference. It would be a powerful way of curbing the
corporate excesses, as well as pushing for productive uses of our savings.
Ethical funds exist for commercial savings, of course, but they make up only a
fraction of the market.

Since small savers own World Inc., perhaps protesters should get busy
checking out what’s happening to their cash rather than besieging the World
Trade Organization. Remember, if the WTO is in bed with big business, we own the
entire bedroom.