Individual investors are angry about CEO pay, and they want their mutual fund firms to do something about it.
Top money managers such as BlackRock Inc. and Vanguard Group oversee trillions of dollars for individuals, but the firms rarely challenge CEO pay in their proxy votes on behalf of investors.
That practice may not match well with the views of their clients. When asked directly, most investors in American fund firms are critical of CEO pay packages, according to a national Reuters/Ipsos poll.
Among respondents, 59 percent said chief executives at S&P 500 companies were paid "too much," and 56 percent said mutual fund firms "should challenge executive pay more often."
The survey was conducted between March 22 and March 31. It included 1,024 people who said they invested with one or more of five top asset managers and 722 people who said they had at least some understanding of what a fund manager is. It has a credibility interval of about 4 percentage points.
The poll results underscore a growing angst over large-company CEO pay, which now runs more than 300 times that of U.S. rank-and-file workers, according to a study by the AFL-CIO, the largest U.S. federation of unions.
Many CEOs at major companies have pay packages worth $10 million or more.
One poll participant, Fargo, North Dakota cabdriver Brent Hartz, said CEO pay is often "ridiculous" and worries that managers of funds he owns -- such as the $50 billion Vanguard Growth Index Fund -- are too cozy with corporate chiefs.
"It's almost like they're in cahoots with each other," Hartz said in a telephone interview.
Asset managers hold about 30 percent of U.S. corporate stock, giving them great influence over executive compensation and other corporate governance issues. Retail investors have about 89 percent of the nearly $16 trillion held in mutual funds, according to trade group Investment Company Institute.