By Ross Kerber, U.S. Sustainable Business Correspondent
Shareholder activists who harped on protecting children who use Facebook and Instagram got their chance to say "I told you so" when parent company Meta Platforms struck an $18 billion settlement last week with state officials over child safety.
Yet even as the deal was coming together, Washington officials were readying plans to diminish the power of those activists. You can read about the bigger struggle for influence between Corporate America's investors and managers in my column this week, linked below.
This week you will also find links to our coverage of a suit over Amazon's ad sales practices, a corruption investigation in Hungary, and Vanguard's Bicentennial-era triumph.
Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg speaks via video conference to delegates at the G20 Innovation Ministerial summit, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, U.S., September 1, 2026. REUTERS/Jonathan Drake
Meta's $18 billion lesson on ignoring shareholders
If Washington sidelines shareholder activists, we'll miss them when they're gone.
On August 28, U.S. securities regulators took a step to diminish the power of investors who file resolutions at corporate annual meetings, aiming to move oversight to states. The official notice came just days after Meta Platforms agreed to pay up to $18 billion to resolve children's safety concerns. Activists from across the political spectrum say the deal vindicates their years-long efforts to make safety an issue at the company's annual meetings and say the regulators should keep the status quo.
"Shareholder resolutions have a history of being an early-warning system, and Meta's the perfect example of that," said Michael Passoff, the founder and CEO of activist shareholder group Proxy Impact.
Meta's saga captures a running debate over how to balance power between Corporate America's managers and investors. You can read my full column on the matter this week by clicking the button below.
Amazon.com faces a lawsuit from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and 22 states alleging it illegally raised advertising auction prices. The company denied wrongdoing.
In the latest probe of corruption under Hungary's former prime minister, Viktor Orban, authorities are investigating alleged abuses at state-owned Eximbank including a €1 billion ($1.2 billion) loan to North Macedonia.
A 2024 New York law seeking to force fossil fuel companies to pay for climate change damages cannot be enforced, a federal judge ruled.
On my radar
A share certificate for the first index mutual fund, shown on Vanguard's website. The fund was later renamed the Vanguard 500 Index Fund.
A Bicentennial innovation: The Vanguard 500 Index Fund launched 50 years ago on August 31, 1976, and became a big influence on markets on behalf of clients like former U.S. President Barack Obama. Total assets as of June 30: $1.675 trillion.
AI user skepticism: A new Just Capital report found that "78% of Americans who use AI every day support pausing or slowing AI development so each model release can be evaluated more carefully, compared with 72% of Americans overall."
Is Capitalism broken? - That's the title of this Open to Debate video program I recommend so you can watch Harvard professor Jason Furman slug it out with entrepreneur Nick Hanauer.
