Book Review: The Shareholder Value Myth: How Putting Shareholders First Harms Investors, Corportations, and the Public
This article was written by guest author, Michael C. Macchiarola, Distinguished Lecturer at City University of New York.* As our inelegant Presidential contest examines unceremoniously the very foundations of free enterprise, and questions the appropriate roles and responsibilities of its participants and of government more generally, Professor Lynn Stout’s The Shareholder Value Myth offers a critique of its own, laying blame for many of the corporate world’s recent failures at the feet of the overzealous corporation and its unapologetic pursuit of shareholder value. Stout’s book represents a natural progression – or corporate law corollary – to the financial world’s growing mistrust of the Efficient Market Hypothesis in the wake of our recent crisis.[1] And, I must confess, at the outset, that I approached this book and its philosophy with a…