Final answer:
The minimum number of investors needed to vote to change the company's top management is 4. Investors 1 and 2 cannot be certain of always getting their way in how the company will be run unless they have the support of additional investors with a significant number of shares.
Step-by-step explanation:
The minimum number of investors it would take to vote to change the company's top management can be determined by calculating the total number of shares needed for a majority vote. In this case, since there are 100,000 shares outstanding, a majority vote would require at least 50,001 shares. To calculate how many investors would hold this number of shares, we need to add up the shares held by the investors in descending order until we reach or exceed 50,001 shares. Starting with the investor holding the highest number of shares and adding subsequent investors until we meet the threshold, we find that it would take a minimum of 4 investors to vote to change the company's top management.
As for whether investors 1 and 2 can always get their way in how the company will be run if they agree to vote together, it depends on the total number of shares held by all the other investors. Since there are 80,000 shares held by investors other than 1 and 2, they would still need the support of additional investors who hold a significant number of shares to have a guaranteed majority vote.