Updating Fiduciary Duty to Address Systemic Risk. Paul Rissman highlights a growing conflict between corporate directors and diversified investors. This post builds on that insight, proposing practical legal reforms—from redefining materiality to empowering employee and retail shareholders—to align fiduciary duty with systemic risk and modern portfolio theory. The goal is not to abandon shareholder primacy, […]
Fiduciary duty, has inverted, to become a duty to the corporation and its shares. We must reclaim it to serve its ultimate beneficiaries—shareholders as people.
The Proxy Voting Choice Revolution is a paper by Alon Brav, Tao Li, Dorothy S. Lund, and Zikui Pan, dated September 12, 2025. It was published by the European Corporate Governance Institute – Law Working Paper No. 875/2025, HKU Jockey Club Enterprise Sustainability Global Research Institute Paper No. 2025/145, available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=5500098 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5500098. The paper […]
Benefit corporation governance provides increased accountability. Most of our financial capital is allocated and stewarded through a system that has a primary goal of creating financial return. This goal directs the real economy, where shareholders treat corporations as accountable for financial results, but not for their economic, social or environmental impact. (more…)
Elroy Dimson, Oguzhan Karakas, and Xi Li analyze an extensive proprietary database of corporate social responsibility engagements with US public companies over 1999–2009. Engagements address environmental, social, and governance concerns. They are followed by a one-year abnormal return that averages 1.8%, comprising 4.4% for successful and zero for unsuccessful engagements. (more…)