Robert Monks, a legendary shareholder activist recently gave a talk as part of the Shareholder Activism course at Harvard Law School about the past, the present, and the future of shareholder activism.
Mr. Monks habitually emphasises the importance of shareholders, noting that in the absence of an informed, motivated and powerful counter force to management, the corporation will always have the problem of autocrat who is answerable to no-one. He notes that capital markets generate tremendous wealth. The key issue is who is entitled to this wealth.
Mr. Monks concludes that the current governance system is in need of overhaul partly because of the asymmetry of resources available to the company compared with the activist shareholder.
Background materials about Mr. Monks and his talk are available here. A video of the talk is available here (Quicktime .mov format). Posted by Jim Naughton, co-editor, HLS Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, on Wednesday November 18, 2009 at 9:20 am
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