The aggressive promotion of Remdesivir by Gilead Sciences (GILD) contributed to the campaign against HCQ, the key part of the most effective treatment for C19. Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, and the fake news media led attacks against HCQ. Gilead Sciences is headquartered in the Silicon Valley.
The following table shows a surprising concentration of publicly traded shares of Gilead, Big Tech / (anti-) social media, and the New York Times in the hands of a small group of 6-8 investment management corporations.
| GILD | FB | MSFT | GOOG | TWTR | NYT | ||||||||
| Top Inst. Holders | % | $M | % | $M | % | $M | % | $M | % | $M | % | $M | |
| Vanguard Group | 8.54% | 8,006 | 7.85% | 31,496 | 8.44% | 100,961 | 6.87% | 26,934 | 10.57% | 2,037 | 8.61% | 438 | |
| Blackrock Inc. | 8.07% | 7,566 | 6.62% | 26,558 | 6.83% | 81,627 | 6.01% | 23,563 | 6.59% | 1,269 | 7.75% | 394 | |
| Capital Research | 7.65% | 7,175 | 3.01% | 12,064 | 1.23% | 14,706 | |||||||
| State Street Corp. | 4.53% | 4,246 | 3.97% | 15,920 | 4.15% | 49,642 | 3.50% | 13,737 | 4.54% | 875 | |||
| Capital International | 4.49% | 4,214 | 2.14% | 8,604 | 1.37% | 16,326 | 1.35% | 5,297 | |||||
| Capital World | 3.69% | 3,463 | 1.68% | 6,744 | 1.83% | 21,940 | 3.19% | 162 | |||||
| Geode Capital | 1.59% | 1,486 | 1.45% | 5,806 | 1.53% | 18,244 | 1.31% | 5,120 | 1.50% | 289 | |||
| Northern Trust Corp. | 1.24% | 1,162 | 1.15% | 4,626 | 1.21% | 14,528 | 1.19% | 4,671 | 1.51% | 290 | |||
| Total | 39.8% | 37,318 | 27.9% | 111,818 | 26.6% | 317,974 | 20.2% | 79,322 | 24.7% | 4,760 | 19.6% | 994 | |
The Vanguard Group and Blackrock are the top holders in all of the mentioned companies (except for the NYT, where it is #3, a hair below Darsana Capital Partners LP). These institutional investors are also among the top holders of many other large public companies.
All holders are selected from the Yahoo lists of the Top 10 Institutional holders. For GILD, the top 7 & the 9th holder were selected, then the respective holdings in other companies were aligned. If the list were compiled out of top 20, 50, or 100 top holders, the overlap would be even larger.
The data spreadsheet: Gilead-Owners.xlsx