Matt Levine’s Money Stuff: How Should Shareholders Vote?

Shareholder voting

It is approximately true that corporations are “owned” by their shareholders. The managers of the company work for the shareholders, and the shareholders have the ultimate power to hire and fire them and to approve major strategic decisions. In practice, modern public corporations are owned mostly by diversified shareholders who are rationally apathetic. If you have $1 million of retirement savings in the S&P 500 index, it would be absolutely insane for you to spend even five minutes thinking about who should be the chief executive officer of Sealed Air Corp., or how much he should be paid, ...