"Why have stockholders?... What contribution do they make, entitling them to heirship of half the profits of the industrial system, receivable partly in the form of dividends, and partly in the form of increased market values resulting from undistributed corporate gains? Stockholders toil not, neither do they spin, to earn that reward. They are beneficiaries by position only. Justification for their inheritance must be sought outside classic economic reasoning.... [and] can be founded only upon social grounds... that justification turns on the distribution as well as the existence of wealth. Its force exists only in direct ratio to the number of individuals who hold such wealth. Justification for the stockholder's existence thus depends on increasing distribution within the American population. Ideally the stockholder's position will be impregnable only when every American family has its fragment of that position and of the wealth by which the opportunity to develop individuality becomes fully actualized."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Adolf A. Berle and Gardiner C. Means. The Modern Corporation and Private Property. 1932/1967, p. xxiii
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Shareholder
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Shareholder
7 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Shareholder →
Related Quotes
"This theory maintains that the objectives of the firm should be derived by balancing the conflicting claims of the va…"
"[...] limits on shareholder democracy correlate with both unusually good and unusually poor corporate performance [..…"
"These efforts to induce dissent in corporate boardrooms are likely to be unpopular with some CEOs, just as discussant…"
"It can be argued that the U.S. brokerage and investment banking industry has transformed the modern American stock ma…"
"The economic fate of a corporation, like that of other business enterprises, is ultimately controlled by individual c…"
"Berle and Means’ book remains the point of departure and the central reference for reflection about corporate governa…"
"There is no short game for a venture capitalist"
"Building products has become easier and cheaper, but building brands is harder than ever"
"The first phase of ROI is understanding if your unit metrics justify growth. Without that, there is no longer game"
"If you're building a platform like Zepto or Blinkit, you’re in the Formula One lane. You need capital at scale, netwo…"