>To be fair, shareholder litigation is a major tool by unions and others to
>mess with management and extract concessions in other areas-- all part of
>corporate campaigns.
Which, I'm told by people who used to work on them, mare pretty ineffective. Not corp camp, but the shareholder activist component.
> The capitalists fight such accountability rules tooth
>and nail -- they spent hundreds of millions weakening them in a statewide
>initiative a few years ago in California -- so it is hardly taking the side
>of the capitalists to support those rules.
Which accountability rules, and which capitalists? Wall Street was big on the shareholder rights agenda through the 80s and early 90s. The effort sagged a bit during the late years of the bull market, when managers got away with funny accounting and ridiculous options grants, but I bet we'll see more of it now that the good times aren't rolling.
>Big capitalists don't need lawsuits to enforce their power-- they have the
>cash to do it.
Are you kidding? Shareholder litigation is a major business. Paradoxically, the growth of "passive" investing - index funds, for example - means that many big investors no longer dump shares of companies they're not happy with; they become activist shareholders instead.
Doug