Elaine Chao Quotes

Most shareholders have little if any control over the companies in which they own stock, even if they own a million shares.

Well-managed companies with independent boards have nothing to fear from activist shareholders.

Good shareholder activists have incredible interest in the company because they own a lot of it.

If power lies more and more in the hands of corporations rather than governments, the most effective way to be political is not to cast one's vote at the ballot box, but to do so at the supermarket or at a shareholders' meeting. When provoked, corporations respond.

Banks need to have large shareholders on the board that have a direct interest in their performance.

Shareholder activism works when activists understand something about the characteristics of the business that the board doesn't.

In the age of activism that is clearly not going away, it would seem that some form of engagement from directors with shareholders - rather than directors simply taking their cues from management - would go a long way toward helping boards work on behalf of all shareholders rather just the most vocal.

Shareholder activism is not a privilege - it is a right and a responsibility. When we invest in a company, we own part of that company and we are partly responsible for how that company progresses. If we believe there is something going wrong with the company, then we, as shareholders, must become active and vocal.

For decades, activist shareholders were an entertaining, but largely ignored, Wall Street sideshow. Disgruntled investors would attend annual meetings to harangue executives, criticize strategies - and protest that their complaints were being ignored.

When I took over the family business, it had already been a publicly traded company for 20 years. During one of the first annual meetings I attended, one shareholder stood up and advised me and everyone in attendance that I should resign.

No one person controls Microsoft. The board and the shareholders decide whether they want to have me as CEO.

We invited HP executives to participate in the management and in the board. HCL had this concept of corporate officers since inception in 1999. We had a remuneration committee. Now everyone is talking about nomination and remuneration committee. We had this from 1999.

One way to promote shareholder engagement and activism is through greater accountability and transparency.

The World Bank is a shareholder-driven organisation, and as in all such organisations, the majority of shareholders would want a manager of their liking at the top.

You don't want another Enron? Here's your law: If a company, can't explain, in one sentence, what it does... it's illegal.

I'd be resentful if shareholders who don't know the business tried to tell me what to do.

Where there is flagrant abuse of corporate entities we must and will seek to tackle it.

We're all shareholders. These guys below me, they see the CEO taking it easy, it's their money.

I'm going to continue doing my thing and work my butt off to add value for shareholders and as long as they and the board see fit to keep me in this role, I feel enormously privileged to serve.

The real mechanism for corporate governance is the active involvement of the owners.

I'm a cynic about corporate democracy and boards.

Imagine if investors in Wal-Mart really cared about bribery at that company's overseas operations or safety standards at its overseas manufacturing plants. If investors pulled their capital, corporate leaders would have to respond.

I really believe that all CEO pay should be voted on by shareholders ahead of time. Mine was.

When then-New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer sued me in 2003 over my stewardship as a director of the New York Stock Exchange, the NYSE's legal expenses were more than $100 million, which made it perhaps the priciest litigation in the state's history.

But I can't take responsibility for criminal conduct of somebody inside the company.