Final answer:
To change the company's top management, at least two investors with a collective ownership of more than 50% of the shares are needed. If investors 1 and 2 agree to vote together, they can be certain of getting their way in running the company.
Step-by-step explanation:
To determine the minimum number of investors required to vote to change the company's top management, we need to find investors who collectively own more than 50% of the shares.
First, let's add up the shares owned by investors 1 to 5: 20,000 + 18,000 + 15,000 + 10,000 + 7,000 = 70,000 shares. To surpass the 50% threshold, we need to find the number of investors who own at least 30,001 shares (half of the total shares plus one) or more.
In this case, it would be investors 1 and 2 who collectively own 38,000 shares. They can be certain of getting their way in how the company will be run as long as they can convince at least one more investor to join them, as they will then collectively own more than 50% of the shares.