The key megatrends are: …

The emergence of 'fiduciary capitalism': the growing inclination — and capability — among major institutional investors for shareholder activism in the governance of their portfolio companies on these issues. Climate change, for example, has now become the fastest-growing category of shareholder resolutions in the US.

Therefore, Monks believes, if shareholders become an "effective, informed, competent counter force to whom management must be accountable," which is what he advocates, much of what citizens might otherwise seek through the political process will be available to them as shareholders. The idea, which Monks calls fiduciary capitalism, is to "restore ancient values of ownership that preceded the corporate form, and that seem to have eluded corporations in the long modern era."

At the end of the twentieth century the rise of institutional ownership — particularly through private and public pension funds and mutual funds — has led to a period we have characterized as fiduciary capitalism, a re-concentration of ownership in the hands of a relatively small number of decision makers. Even though, in fact, legal ownership is still widely dispersed, the fiduciary duty of these institutions potentially gives them a responsibility to exercise the power of ownership.