Why companies need owners

All companies need owners who are engaged, committed and, ideally, thinking about long term.

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A venture with one million shareholders ultimately has no real owner.

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History will look back on the 1990s and early 2000s as a time when the principal officers of public American corporations transferred from shareholders to themselves approximately $1 trillion - or 10 percent of the market value of public exchanges. This must be the largest peacetime movement of wealth ever recorded, and it was accomplished through stealth that amounted to theft and in a spirit of regulatory permissiveness that certainly rises near to the level of criminal neglect.

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… engaged owners (as opposed to speculators or short-term shareholders) are more likely to guide corporations in ways that align with the common good. This … is because owners who take a long-term view want more than a return on their investments; they want to live in a healthy, just and peaceful world, and so they want corporations to be a force for good.

fortune by way of Jackson Fish Market