Corporate Oversight Quotes

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

The wise rule of action is to restrict the powers of corporations within the … constitutional barrier.

Like all fads, corporate governance has its zealots.

Most libertarians are worried about government but not worried about business. I think we need to be worrying about business in exactly the same way we are worrying about government.

This great oracle of the East India Company himself admits that, if there is no power vested in the Court of Directors but that of the patronage, there is really no government vested in them at all.

The typical large company has a compensation committee, They don't look for Dobermans on that committee, they look for chihuahuas.

They have a new CEO in Wells Fargo . I don't know much about him. The lady who was involved to some degree in the shenanigans along with the CEO are gone. So I need to see where things stand before we go any farther at this point.

If I'm off the teleprompter, management doesn't get to see what I'm going to say.

The large corporations, commonly called trusts, though organized in one State, always do business in many States, often doing very little business in the State where they are incorporated. There is utter lack of uniformity in the State laws about them; and as no State has any exclusive interest in or power over their acts, it has in practice proved impossible to get adequate regulation through State action. Therefore, in the interest of the whole people, the Nation should, without interfering with the power of the States in the matter itself, also assume power of supervision and regulation over all corporations doing an interstate business.

I have had no role whatsoever in relation to any investigation of Burisma, or any of its officers. I explicitly limited my role to focus on corporate governance best practices to facilitate Burisma's desire to expand globally.

Too many people in charge at ESPN, for my taste, were a little too fearful. It's a Disney network. There are just certain boundaries that you can't even tiptoe along.

The great corporations which we have grown to speak of rather loosely as trusts are the creatures of the State, and the State not only has the right to control them, but it is duty bound to control them wherever the need of such control is shown.

More and more it is evident that the State and if necessary the Nation, has got to possess the right of supervision and control as regards the great corporations.

Mandatory auditor rotation is designed to address a potential conflict of interest between a public company and its auditor. Because an auditor is hired and paid by the public company it audits, the auditor's desire to maintain a good relationship with its client could conflict with its duty to rigorously question the client's financial statements.

No business is above government, and government must be empowered to deal adequately with any business that tries to rise above government.

I do not dread these corporations as instruments of power to destroy this country, because there are a thousand agencies which can regulate, restrain and control them.

CEOs pretty much pick the boards that give them salaries and bonuses. That's one of the reasons why the CEO-to-payment [ratio] has so sharply escalated in this country in contrast to Europe. (They're similar societies and it's bad enough there, but here we're in the stratosphere. ] There's no particular reason for it.

We do not wish to discourage enterprise. We do not desire to destroy corporations. We do desire to put them fully at the service of the State and the people.

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.

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

A board of directors that cannot produce reliable audited financial statements for almost seven years simply should not remain in office.

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

I've never been antiregulation. I've always believed that raw, unregulated capitalism doesn't work.

Our respectable legislators will make a most alarming fuss about every bank that is chartered, while manufacturing companies shall pass muster by the dozen, without a single question being asked or answered. Those who strain at a gnat, are marvelously adroit at swallowing a camel.

Candidly, I believe most corporations actually don't mind big government.