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Right, though I don't think it is so vague as to be meaningless. The stakeholder / shareholder value debates in corporate governance play on the extremities of this distinction a lot, with the current koan being that what is good for stakeholders is good for shareholders.


> don't think it is so vague as to be meaningless

It's not, particularly in the context of takeover defenses. There were cases in the 80s where Delaware ruled that only shareholder interests--not all stakeholders'--can be considered when a Board uses its "business judgment" to deploy a poison pill. But shareholders can have aims other than maximizing profit, and companies are free to respond to them.


Right, though it is an interesting question of whether those values either have to be (1) directly fiducial (2) couched in some theory of fiducial return or (3) can be entirely non-fiducial. Doesn't really mean much in practice because management can always just cover their ass by saying that the other aims are also good for the bottom line - even if it is nonsense.




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