Corporate Transparency Quotes

Never pay the slightest attention to what a company president ever says about his stock.

We invited HP executives to participate in the management and in the board. HCL had this concept of corporate officers since inception in 1999. We had a remuneration committee. Now everyone is talking about nomination and remuneration committee. We had this from 1999.

The war to rein in Wall Street excess is never over.

In the age of activism that is clearly not going away, it would seem that some form of engagement from directors with shareholders - rather than directors simply taking their cues from management - would go a long way toward helping boards work on behalf of all shareholders rather just the most vocal.

Our aim is not to do away with corporations; on the contrary, these big aggregations are an inevitable development of modern industrialism …. We are not hostile to them; we are merely determined that they shall be so handled as to subserve the public good. We draw the line against misconduct, not against wealth.

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

Executives can no longer hide behind the corporate veil. They need to be accountable for what their companies do, because entities are responsible for socially irresponsible behavior.

Lots of businesses built in the early 1990s were not very transparent, not only by Russians, but also by foreigners.

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.

The details of the personal expenses that executives put on the company tab often are not known because loopholes in federal disclosure rules let publicly traded companies generally avoid disclosing the perks they give executives along with pay and stock options.

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

For decades, activist shareholders were an entertaining, but largely ignored, Wall Street sideshow. Disgruntled investors would attend annual meetings to harangue executives, criticize strategies - and protest that their complaints were being ignored.

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.

People used to be unhappy that files and data of Aramco are undeclared, unclear, and not transparent.

WikiLeaks will not comply with legally abusive requests from Scientology any more than WikiLeaks has complied with similar demands from Swiss banks, Russian offshore stem-cell centers, former African kleptocrats, or the Pentagon.

I have always felt that public, commercial and community organisations should be as open as possible about their affairs. They need to be accountable to their owners, their customers, their members and communities and other interest groups.

Whistleblowers deserve protection, but employees are not federal agents.

Transparency, accountability and sustainability have become the slogans of the market leaders. Companies carry out environmental and social audits to court the consumer, and even the bluest chips woo organisations such as Greenpeace and Amnesty.

Here's a viewer's guide to BP media briefings. Whenever you hear someone with a British accent talking about this on behalf of British Petroleum they are not telling you the truth. That's the bottom-line.

How many big businesses don't resort to underhand means?

I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours.

In 2001, Texaco was bought by Chevron, and during deliberations concerning that sale, an 800 page document listing the problems and liabilities connected to Texaco was brought forward at their stockholder meeting by Amazon Watch, a non-profit dedicated to protecting the Amazon.

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.

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.

Business is always looking to avoid the toughest norms. But some do it in a civilized way, while others push it using uncivilized, brazen methods.