Corporate purpose is having a moment, as it seems to do each generation or so. The Business Roundtable made waves last year by pivoting away from shareholder centrism in its “redefinition” of corporate purpose. Directors, officers, institutional investors, and others …

Institutional investors are increasingly playing a major role in the shift toward stakeholder capitalism.  They are also facing pressure from their clients and others to focus more on ensuring that their investments promote corporate sustainability. Such expectations are reinforced by …

Sustainability in business and environmental, social, or governance (ESG) factors in finance have entered the mainstream. In 2020, the CEO of Blackrock wrote: “Our investment conviction is that sustainability and climate integrated portfolios can provide better risk-adjusted returns to investors.”…

What do the emergence of independent directors in South Korea, the legal reforms on related-party transactions in India, the continued rise of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors in the United States, and the global spread of corporate governance codes …

In a 1987 paper, available here, we  argued that non-investor stakeholders play an important role in influencing financial policy and corporate valuation. We also  distinguished explicit claims between a company and its counterparties from what we called implicit claims. …

This is the gossip season, and almost everyone has heard a rumor about who will be the next chair of the SEC. Although I was interviewed by the Biden transition team (for my views, not as a candidate), my sources …

In August 2019, the Business Roundtable released a statement redefining the purpose of a corporation to maximize value “for the benefit of all stakeholders – customers, employees, suppliers, communities, and shareholders.” The statement was signed by 181 CEOs, including Jamie …

In July 2020, the European Commission published the “Study on directors’ duties and sustainable corporate governance” by EY. The report purports to find evidence of debilitating short-termism in EU corporate governance and recommends many changes to support sustainable …