Corporate Reform Quotes

I think there's a lot of things that need to be changed in the business.

We Have Got To Bring Corporate America To Its Knees

In the '70s and '80s, what private equity did is it changed corporate America. It started holding companies accountable, and for the first time managers started thinking like owners.

I don't know the extent to which they do business [ in Wells Fargo]. I just want to see how this thing continues to unfold and if they have a legitimately major change in their culture.

We have bloated bureaucracies in Corporate America. The root of the problem is the absence of real corporate democracy.

The company-as-a-machine model fits how people think about and operate conventional companies. And, of course, it fits how people think about changing conventional companies: You have a broken company, and you need to change it, to fix it.

The point being we used to have a system that wasn't as rigged in how the tax structure functioned. The president [Barack Obama] and I have been trying to get rid of some of these loopholes for some time. Look, we have to change the corporate culture.

The ethos on Wall Street has not changed, and that's not going to come from the corner office. That's going to come, for better or worse, from Washington, and the whole idea of greed is still good, that is still pervasive.

Without getting into brothels, there are ethical capitalists the problem is that there aren't enough of them. It is not "just a few bad apples" that have been evident in our corporations, our investment bankers and our mutual funds, but so many that one has to concede that the barrel itself needs some work.

You don't have to destroy an entire industry to rid it of corruption.

Women will change the corporation more than we expect.

Anyone in a large organization who thinks major change is impossible should probably get out.

Now the Japanese companies are more focused on that. To have two independent directors - I think it's good to have outside people look at you and think of what you could be doing better. Those are voluntary, but most of the companies told me they're going to do it. And I think it's good for them to say our returns on equity, for example, should be higher. Also, I think some could be more ambitious.

My goal is to change NXT. It is to change every company I've ever been to, and I've changed every company.

If Japanese companies don't reform drastically and implement English as their daily business language, the economy will only continue to contract.

If General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye. It won't go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed. Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the automakers will stay the course - the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check.