Martin Winterkorn Quotes

I don't feel I'm at liberty to speak about the actions of any one CEO. That's not fair; given CEOs have duties to their shareholders.

Shareholder meetings are not usually the occasion for utter candor - or for that matter, arch sarcasm - by chief executives.

Not only is self-regulation largely a fantasy, but repeated scandals across multiple industries have proved that companies are fundamentally incapable of self-regulating for the greater good.

I'm the C.E.O., nominated by the shareholders. If they're not happy, I have to take the consequences.

Where there is flagrant abuse of corporate entities we must and will seek to tackle it.

Killing Intel, I, I just had to resign from the Apple Board.

People should be encouraged by things like awards given for corporate governance practices.

Shareholders have the right and obligation to set the parameters of corporate behavior within which management pursues profit.

And obviously, with hindsight now, now knowing what went on in the company, it would have been absolutely appropriate back then for us to have the chief executive of the company, most senior person in the United Kingdom, come and answer for the policy they were pursuing. And we ducked that, and frankly that's a failure of Parliament.

Only the corporation that shirks from the light would have anything to fear from government. About the welfare of such corporations we need not be over-sensitive.

Corporations have neither bodies to be punished, nor souls to be condemned; they therefore do as they like.

We have to raise the bar on corporate governance. Shareholders want ethical behavior and honesty.

Technical problems can be remediated. A dishonest corporate culture is much harder to fix.

When I took over the family business, it had already been a publicly traded company for 20 years. During one of the first annual meetings I attended, one shareholder stood up and advised me and everyone in attendance that I should resign.

No one person controls Microsoft. The board and the shareholders decide whether they want to have me as CEO.

The days of CEOs getting rich while shareholders lose has got to end. Management must be accountable.

When Facebook went public, they didn't have a particularly strong model of governance.

At D.O.J., we don't want to go after the corporate wrongdoers simply as an end unto itself; we want to decrease the amount of corporate wrongdoing that happens in the first place. We want to restore and help protect the corporate culture of responsibility.

Every technology company should have a red button somewhere in the headquarters where, if they realize they've caused more societal harm than they expected and done more harm than good, they press the button, and the company dissolves instantly.

There is no information about corporations. There is only disinformation.

The corporation is an out-of-control Frankenstein.

I'd shrink government in a minute, if I could shrink GM, Bank of America, and all these immoral corporations that operate by an undemocratic code, with no soul and no conscience.

Secrecy cannot be used to cover up bad management.

Corporate 'citizens' are the leading outlaws. They may regularly violate the law without surrendering their political rights.

Excessive pandering to stockholders is as bad as any other form of pandering