John le Carre Quotes

I think we've got to look at corporate law. Back in the day when I studied it, there were different constituencies that were to be served, and I think there was a real wrong turn about 20 to 25 years ago when the theory began to be promoted that your highest duty - in fact, some would argue, your only duty - is to maximize shareholder return. I just don't buy it. And it wasn't the original underpinnings of the legal theory of corporate law.

I think we have to take a look at corporate law. We have to take a look at the incentives that we can perhaps use to encourage more longer term.

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.

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

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.

What the proprietorship of these papers is aiming at is power, and power without responsibility—the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.

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.

Companies that are publicly held have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders to try to maximize their profits within ethical reasons.

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.'

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.

Why not stakeholder action? There's no economic principal that says that management should be responsive to shareholders, in fact you can read in texts of business economics that they could just as well have a system in which the management is responsible to stakeholders.

The board is currently undertaking what could be its most important task, ... We are confident that we're going to make a choice that is in the best interest of the company, shareholders and others.

This sort of behavior is left to the psychotic, dogmatic, fundamentalist believers you see on your TV everyday letting off bombs and killing people in the name of God. Beliefs are dangerous. Beliefs allow the mind to stop functioning. A non-functioning mind is clinically dead. Believe in nothing.

Religion makes kind people say unkind things: "I must prove my faith, so mutilate the genitals of my children." They wouldn't do that if God didn't tell them to do so.

I'm not against the corporations. They are our wealth. But they are getting too greedy. I don't want to do away with corporations. I want them to make our cars, however, not our laws.

In the modern corporation the decisive power, that of the managers , is derived from no one but the managers themselves controlled by nobody and nothing and responsible to no one. It is in the most literal sense unfounded, unjustified, uncontrolled and irresponsible power.

No theory is too false, no fable too absurd, no superstition too degrading for acceptance when it has become embedded in common belief. Men will submit themselves to torture and to death, mothers will immolate [burn] their children at the bidding of beliefs they thus accept.

I have to look out for the shareholder’s interests, and I’m the largest shareholder.

A committee appointed by the President of a company will report what the President wishes to hear. Would they dare report otherwise?.

Isn't killing people in the name of God a pretty good definition of insanity?

The corporations have become our government. They're not just influential. Department by department, you name it, they put their people in high government positions, they have 10,000 PACs and 35,000 lobbyists, so there's no more opening to be heard.

We have a lot of issues with corporate power that have to be addressed. My plan takes us further and it would do the job.

I'd shrink government in a minute, if I could shrink GM, Bank of America, and all these immoral corporations that operate by an undemocratic code, with no soul and no conscience.

On the face of it, shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world.

You owe the companies nothing. You especially don't owe them any courtesy. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don't even start asking for theirs.