Summary of Lynn Stout's The Shareholder Value Myth

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 The Deepwater Horizon disaster was a tragedy on an epic scale not only for the rig and the eleven people who died on it, but also for the corporation BP. By June of 2010, BP had suspended paying its regular dividends, and its stock had plummeted to less than $30 per share. #2 The Deepwater Horizon disaster is just one example of a larger problem that afflicts many public corporations today. That problem is called shareholder value thinking, and it says that public corporations exist to maximize shareholders’ wealth. #3 The 1990s saw the emergence of the idea that corporations should serve only shareholder wealth, which was reflected in stock price. This idea became dominant by the turn of the millennium. #4 The past dozen years have seen a daisy chain of corporate disasters, from massive frauds at Enron, HealthSouth, and Worldcom in the early 2000s to the near-failure and costly taxpayer bailout of many of America’s largest financial institutions in 2008.