Contributor: David Pitt-Watson

David Pitt-Watson is a former chief executive of Hermes Focus Asset Management, Europe's leading shareholder activist fund manager. He has also worked as an advisor on issues of management and business policies for Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, and from 1997 to 1999 was the assistant general secretary of the Labour Party.

Pitt-Watson's book, The New Capitalists, explains that, thanks to the rise of mutual funds and retirement plans, the actual owners of the world's corporate giants are no longer a few wealthy families, but the vast majority of working people. These 'citizen investors' are now waking up to the power they wield and are compelling major change in business strategy across the globe. The New Capitalists by Steven Davis, Jon                               Lukomnik and David Pitt-Watson is published by the Harvard Business School Press.