The CEOs Want You to Know That They Care
With their new statement disavowing “shareholder value,” the CEOs of the country’s biggest corporations are trying to send a message: we feel your pain and we want to do better. They’re empty words, but it’s the latest sign that the masters of the universe are getting nervous about capitalism’s waning popular legitimacy.
Deutsche Bank chief executive Jacques Brand (left), president and CEO of Convergys Andrea Ayers (second left), and president and CEO of Dell Michael Dell (third left) listen to US president Barack Obama at the quarterly meeting of the Business Roundtable on December 3, 2014 in Washington, DC. (Aude Guerrucci-Pool / Getty Images)
America’s biggest corporations have an announcement: they feel your pain, and they are ready to become better citizens.
This week the Business Roundtable — whose greatest hits include NAFTA, killing major antitrust and consumer protection bills, broadening Reagan’s corporate tax cuts, and making it easier for companies to fire workers trying to form a union — announced that it is “modernizing its principles on the role of a corporation” to value all stakeholders, not just shareholders.
As a result, 181 CEOs of some of the world’s largest weapons manufacturers, banks, oil companies, pharmaceutical companies, manufacturers, and retailers have pledged to do their part to restore faith in meritocracy and make the American Dream a reality.
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