Among institutional investors, pension funds and insurance companies  1  Julia Coronado and Steve Sharpe, “Did Pension Accounting Contribute to a Stock Market Bubble?” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, July 2003. BIS Review 12/2004  3  are thought to benefit the most from shareholder activism because they tend to have relatively longterm investment horizons.
On the other hand, managers of index mutual funds may have little interest in shareholder activism since they merely adjust their holdings when the mix of the index changes and want only to follow the index, not influence it. In addition, mutual funds and pension funds may have conflicts of interest that encourage passivity.