Evan Bayh Quotes

Our laws demand that a corporation have a fiduciary responsibility with shareholders to maximize profits. They are legally required to make as much money as possible, any way possible within 'the law.'

As a pro-business Democrat, I understand the obligations of publicly traded companies to maximize returns to shareholders.

I would rather be responsible and accountable and help to reward the public shareholders going ahead.

Our responsibility is to maximise shareholder value, and if that means we can make short-term investment where we can maximise short-term value, we can do that.

Shareholders have the right and obligation to set the parameters of corporate behavior within which management pursues profit.

The question is, do corporate executives, provided they stay within the law, have responsibilities in their business activities other than to make as much money for their stockholders as possible? And my answer to that is, no they do not.

The unhappy theory of business ethics is this: you have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize profit. Period. To do anything other than that is to cheat your investors. And in a competitive world, you don't have much wiggle room here.

I wear two hats. The one is business and increasing my shareholders' value; the other is social responsibility.

He or she must be successful in economic terms, but always within an ethical framework. Whether his or her constituency is a corporation and its shareholders or the customers in a small and privately held business, his or her first responsibility is to serve that constituency.

I think good companies can navigate being public and doing the right things for their customers.

Excessive pandering to stockholders is as bad as any other form of pandering

There's a myth out there that you have to genuflect at the altar of quarterly earnings. But it's a false choice that you can either be a good fiduciary or promote values such as environmental sustainability.

A corporation that is publicly traded, it has one goal: to make money. It doesn't have a soul. If it does have a soul, it comes from the people who run it.

We have an obligation to provide a return for our shareholders.

How much harm does a company have to do before we question its right to exist?

When Wal-Mart brings water down to the Katrina victims, it's not doing that to be nice; it's doing it to make larger profits and to increase the value of its shares. If its actions are not accomplishing those objectives, the shareholders can sue the executives, and sue them successfully, because it is illegal for them to act on behalf of any other reason than increasing the value of their shares. There is nothing wrong with that. That is the way that they were created and the way we want them to function to increase prosperity in the market.

Doing good business - being ethical, being transparent, being caring, implementing values in your business - makes a difference, and you make money at the same time.

Companies and leaders are role models - not just with the business community - but in the broader world.

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.

Corporate executives need to re-frame their responsibilities to include the interests of all the stakeholders in society at large; not just shareholders, but also employees, the citizens of our communities, and those who care about the environment.

As for the company, I did all I could from the very outset of this affair to remove Yukos and its employees from danger.

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

You go to any MBA program, and you will be taught the theory of the firm, that the purpose of the firm is the maximization of return on invested capital. I always thought this was a kind of lunacy.

The best discussion of trouble in boardroom and business office is found in newspapers' own financial pages and speeches by journalists in management jobs.

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