USA - Big Pharma and mainstream media are largely owned by two asset management firms: BlackRock and Vanguard. Vanguard and BlackRock are the top two owners of Time Warner, Comcast, Disney and News Corp, four of the six media companies that control more than 90% of the US media landscape. BlackRock and Vanguard form a secret monopoly that own just about everything else you can think of too. In all, they have ownership in 1,600 American firms, which in 2015 had combined revenues of $9.1 trillion. When you add in the third-largest global owner, State Street, their combined ownership encompasses nearly 90% of all S&P 500 firms. Vanguard is the largest shareholder of BlackRock. Vanguard itself, on the other hand, has a unique structure that makes its ownership more difficult to discern, but many of the oldest, richest families in the world can be linked to Vanguard funds.