Shareholders Quotes

Some shareholders believe it is all about price and a few people‘s pockets.

We can collaborate with a Netscape employee or partner who‘s halfway around the world. We can distribute information and software to customers and shareholders, and get their feedback.

Back in the 1970s, Kodak tried to give $25m to a black civil rights organisation in Rochester, New York. The company’s shareholders rose up in arms: making this politically charged offering wasn’t the reason they had entrusted Kodak with their money. The donation was withdrawn.

I’m going to continue doing my thing and work my butt off to add value for shareholders and as long as they and the board see fit to keep me in this role, I feel enormously privileged to serve.

In private companies that are successful, the management have learnt to put their staff first, customers second, shareholders last.

My role is really just to try to make sure that the voice of all shareholders and employees is heard – that no one is bullying their agenda, their choice of a CEO, or their selection of who should be the board members. Benchmark, I believe, has been pushing their agenda at the expense of those stakeholders.

Why are people so obsessed with Pets.com? We shut it down and returned money to shareholders. Besides, there were plenty of other dot-com failures around then.

Just reskinning games with our intellectual property is not an appealing prospect for opportunity. That isn’t something that creates long-term value for shareholders.

Everyone is now praying at the altar of every last dollar of profits to please shareholders. If you invest in your people and treat them well, it’s a different way to increase profits.

In New York, we have laws against defrauding the public, defrauding consumers, defrauding shareholders.

The ability to please your shareholders comes because of what you do for clients.

Experts said public companies worry about the loss of customer confidence and the legal liability to shareholders or security vendors when they report flaws.

When you start to get shareholders, clients, employees, rating agencies, and everybody converging, and then your competitors bad-mouth you, you know you did the right thing.

Regarding our links with the Russian government, Severstal is a private company with no government participation. We are answerable to our shareholders.

If you have a drug that is $100 for one course of therapy, and you know that you can charge $100,000, what should shareholders think when you say, ‘I’d rather not take the heat‘?

I’d be resentful if shareholders who don’t know the business tried to tell me what to do.

If CEO compensation was performance-driven, which I believe it was in IBM’s case, nobody would ever argue. If the shareholders didn’t make billions and billions of dollars, I wouldn’t make millions of dollars. My salary was the same for 10 years. It was all performance-based.

Corporate social responsibility is measured in terms of businesses improving conditions for their employees, shareholders, communities, and environment. But moral responsibility goes further, reflecting the need for corporations to address fundamental ethical issues such as inclusion, dignity, and equality.

I liked being CEO of Blockbuster, but my job is to put it on the bottom line for shareholders.

I basically believe the medical insurance industry should be nonprofit, not profit-making. There is no way a health reform plan will work when it is implemented by an industry that seeks to return money to shareholders instead of using that money to provide health care.

I really believe that all CEO pay should be voted on by shareholders ahead of time. Mine was.

With management and employees on the same side of the table, your interests are aligned, and shareholders look at you as one.

The employers who do best are employers who reject these false choices. It’s not a zero-sum world where you either take care of your workers or you take care of your shareholders. You can do good and do well, too.

As a pro-business Democrat, I understand the obligations of publicly traded companies to maximize returns to shareholders.

In a couple of years, the Chinese will be seen as regular participants in international industry. Their companies have to report to shareholders as well as to the Chinese authorities. They need to make money, they have to be efficient.

We want to be inclusive. We want to have our shareholders, our employees, our customers, whether they are Democrat, Republican, Green or Libertarian, to feel comfortable with how we’re doing business. And so that tends to be apolitical. People say, ‘No, no, I just simply shouldn’t get involved in politics.’

Well-managed companies with independent boards have nothing to fear from activist shareholders.

Compensation needs to be predominately performance-driven. If CEO compensation was performance-driven, which I believe it was in IBM’s case, nobody would ever argue. If the shareholders didn’t make billions and billions of dollars, I wouldn’t make millions of dollars.

As the head of the public company, you can’t say you can’t sell, because then you’re telling your shareholders that your own personal feelings about your assets are more important than their money. And they won‘t invest with you if you do that.

In the 1980s, corporate raiders began mounting unfriendly takeovers of companies that could deliver higher returns to their shareholders – if they abandoned their other stakeholders.

When you manage your company for long-term shareholders, and you manage the company for clients, two of the biggest stakeholders, you will make the right decisions.

As companies become bigger, the global environment more competitive, and the rate of disruptive technological innovation ever faster, the value to shareholders of attracting the best possible CEO increases correspondingly.

It is very clear for us; we will do whatever is in the best interest of Shriram shareholders.

Shareholders, of course, have every right to weigh in on whether (or how) they want a company to exercise political influence.

Every once in a while, brave companies step out and act in ways that move customers and shareholders to also act in good faith.

Creative tension is constructive. Its purpose is to bring out the very best in management so that senior executives can generate the greatest value for shareholders, stakeholders, and society at large.

Companies, to date, have often used the excuse that they are only beholden to their shareholders, but we need shareholders to think of themselves as stakeholders in the well being of society as well.

Companies that are publicly held have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders to try to maximize their profits within ethical reasons.

What I am saying is, all health care has a problem with costs. Medicare is growing slower than the private insurance plans. Why? Because of their efficiency. They don’t have to give money to shareholders. Why should be defending shareholders?