Meet the New Corporate Power Brokers: Passive Investors
Index-fund managers such as Vanguard often cast deciding shareholder votes on issues such as mergers and leadership changes
Investor Jeffrey Osher and his advisers arrived at the May annual meeting of Green Dot Corp., a prepaid-card company, thinking they had enough votes to remove its chief executive from the board.
In the parking lot, they discovered that was no longer true. Index-fund giant Vanguard Group, the fourth-biggest shareholder, changed its vote over the prior weekend to support the CEO.
The reversal is a reminder of who now has...