The big hitters of the financial markets: pension funds, fund-management companies, insurance companies, investment banks, hedge funds, charitable endowment trusts. In the United States, around half of publicly traded shares are owned by institutions and half by individual investors. In the UK, institutions own over two-thirds of listed shares. This gives them considerable clout, including the ability to move the prices in financial markets and to call company bosses to account. But because institutions mostly invest other people’s money, they are themselves prone to agency costs, sometimes acting against the best long-term interests of the people who trust them with their savings.