Heather Bresch Quotes

Far too many executives have become more concerned with the 'four P's' - pay, perks, power and prestige - rather than making profits for shareholders.

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

Large corporations, of course, are blinded by greed. The laws under which they operate require it - their shareholders would revolt at anything less.

Chief executives, who themselves own few shares of their companies, have no more feeling for the average stockholder than they do for baboons in Africa.

Do business managers have a commitment to anything more than the success of their company and to making money? It would be hard to say that they do. Indeed, many business leaders deny that there is any conflict between self-interest and the interests of all.

Corporation. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.

I wish we could be private with Tesla. It actually makes us less efficient to be a public company.

Companies that are publicly held have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders to try to maximize their profits within ethical reasons.

Our laws demand that a corporation have a fiduciary responsibility with shareholders to maximize profits. They are legally required to make as much money as possible, any way possible within 'the law.'

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

I could have closed down bits of British Home Stores to make more money but it's not my style. I want to make my money as a retailer, not by putting people out of work.

We've got some real greedy hogs who own no interest in the company they're running, whose sole interest is in whatever it takes to be able to get to the point to fly out on their golden parachute and milk the shareholder and take risks that they shouldn't take.

I don't believe that someone who sets up an institution should be able to take out the money from the institution or pay dividends to shareholders. I am not saying that institutions should be set up for charity.

There are many highly successful businesses in the United States. There are also many highly paid executives. The policy is not to intermingle the two.

Companies should not have a singular view of profitability. There needs to be a balance between commerce and social responsibility... The companies that are authentic about it will wind up as the companies that make more money.

The real mechanism for corporate governance is the active involvement of the owners.

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

Shareholder activism is not a privilege - it is a right and a responsibility. When we invest in a company, we own part of that company and we are partly responsible for how that company progresses. If we believe there is something going wrong with the company, then we, as shareholders, must become active and vocal.

Regarding our links with the Russian government, Severstal is a private company with no government participation. We are answerable to our shareholders.

Is it possible to run a big industrial corporation in a benevolent fashion? We see these days that even the hippest companies hide some rotten practices to make their profit margins work.

Self-dealing, essentially, occurs when managers run companies to line their own pockets instead of those of the companies' owners. It's been a perennial problem in American capitalism and became a real dilemma when America moved toward a model in which corporations would be run by professional managers who had only small ownership stakes.

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

The average member of the public thinks of 'business' as an impersonal corporate entity, owned by the very rich and managed by over-paid executives.

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

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