Ben Horowitz Quotes

The best discussion of trouble in boardroom and business office is found in newspapers' own financial pages and speeches by journalists in management jobs.

Well-managed companies with independent boards have nothing to fear from activist shareholders.

A lot of deals are done or not done because chief executives are not fully aligned to shareholders.

When the value of the company clearly has fallen below what its assets are worth, having a shareholder who says, 'Let's get a better board' can be helpful.

CEO compensation seems at time excessive but it should be up to the shareholders and boards of directors.

The World Bank is a shareholder-driven organisation, and as in all such organisations, the majority of shareholders would want a manager of their liking at the top.

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

Most shareholders have little if any control over the companies in which they own stock, even if they own a million shares.

I'd be resentful if shareholders who don't know the business tried to tell me what to do.

We're all shareholders. These guys below me, they see the CEO taking it easy, it's their money.

In the '70s and '80s, what private equity did is it changed corporate America. It started holding companies accountable, and for the first time managers started thinking like owners.

Banks need to have large shareholders on the board that have a direct interest in their performance.

On Friday I was in Washington for a meeting with Administration officials. In the course of that meeting, they requested that I 'step aside' as CEO of GM, and so I have.

I'm willing to have two directors on the DuPont board, me being one of them.

I'm going to continue doing my thing and work my butt off to add value for shareholders and as long as they and the board see fit to keep me in this role, I feel enormously privileged to serve.

Once America's CEOs get back to the business of growing their companies rather than growing their share prices, shareholder value will take care of itself, and all Americans will share in the higher wages and other benefits of a renewed era of economic growth.

I really believe that all CEO pay should be voted on by shareholders ahead of time. Mine was.

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

My objection to interlocking directorates is not on the assumption that men mean to do wrong. It is because it is humanly impossible for a man representing conflicting interests on two boards and do right by both, no matter how pure his purpose is.

Companies … have a broader mandate than apparently the reformers want to give them in the political sphere. It is not only maximizing profits. It is advancing the economic interests of the corporation in many different ways.

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.

Activist shareholder resolutions do not have to pass to succeed. The process itself can be so injurious to a company that management will cave to demands.

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

You don't think, when you start a company as the founding CEO, that if your venture actually works, you end up with three jobs: founder, CEO, and chair of the board. The first eight years at Bonobos, I have learned a lot about the tension between the first two. It didn't even occur to me that I had the third job until much later.

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