I wouldn’t say legally required. It is in the best interest of the C suite to appease the shareholders because shareholders are the ones that say how much they get paid or if they even have a job there.
Major shareholders sign term sheets which always govern the terms of who is prioritized with profit, major decisions or in any economic event. Breaking term sheets is breaking a contract which is illegal in the sense it has legal consequence for not being adhered to. Especially if it involves a public company and is under SEC jurisdiction.
Do these term sheets specify the timeframe in which the profit is to be judged? A company could lose money for a few years on paper investing into some new business venture, then yield lots of profit in the last year.
This case is frequently cited as support for the idea that corporate law requires boards of directors to maximize shareholder wealth. However, one view is that this interpretation has not represented the law in most states for some time.
Among non-experts, conventional wisdom holds that corporate law requires boards of directors to maximize shareholder wealth. This common but mistaken belief is almost invariably supported by reference to the Michigan Supreme Court’s 1919 opinion in Dodge v. Ford Motor Co.
— Lynn Stout
Dodge is often misread or mistaught as setting a legal rule of shareholder wealth maximization. This was not and is not the law. Shareholder wealth maximization is a standard of conduct for officers and directors, not a legal mandate. The business judgment rule [which was also upheld in this decision] protects many decisions that deviate from this standard. This is one reading of Dodge. If this is all the case is about, however, it isn’t that interesting.
— M. Todd Henderson
I wouldn’t say legally required. It is in the best interest of the C suite to appease the shareholders because shareholders are the ones that say how much they get paid or if they even have a job there.
Major shareholders sign term sheets which always govern the terms of who is prioritized with profit, major decisions or in any economic event. Breaking term sheets is breaking a contract which is illegal in the sense it has legal consequence for not being adhered to. Especially if it involves a public company and is under SEC jurisdiction.
Do these term sheets specify the timeframe in which the profit is to be judged? A company could lose money for a few years on paper investing into some new business venture, then yield lots of profit in the last year.
If the law says the shareholders can fire you for not maximizing their returns, then it’s by law.
There are many ways to measure ‘maximizing returns’ though which leaves a lot of room for interpretation.
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Cite the statute then
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.
Did you read that?