Leo E. Strine, Jr. is Chief Justice of the Delaware Supreme Court, the Austin Wakeman Scott Lecturer on Law and a Senior Fellow of the Harvard Law School Program on Corporate Governance. This post is based on Chief Justice Strine’s recent keynote address to the Fellows Colloquium of the American College of Governance Counsel, available here. Related research from the Program on Corporate Governance includes The Long-Term Effects of Hedge Fund Activism by Lucian Bebchuk, Alon Brav, and Wei Jiang (discussed on the Forum here), The Myth that Insulating Boards Serves Long-Term Value by Lucian Bebchuk (discussed on the Forum here), and Can We Do Better by Ordinary Investors? A Pragmatic Reaction to the Dueling Ideological Mythologists of Corporate Law, by Leo E. Strine (discussed on the Forum here).
These days it has become fashionable to talk about a subject some of us have been addressing for some time: [1] whether the incentive system for the governance of American corporations optimally encourages long-term investment, sustainable policies, and therefore creates the most long-term economic and social benefit for American workers and investors. Many commentators have come to the conclusion that the answer to that question is no. They bemoan the pressures that can lead corporate managers to quick fixes like offshoring, which might give a balance sheet a short-term benefit, but cut our nation’s long-term prospects. They lament the relative tilt in corporate spending toward stock buybacks and away from spending on capital expenditures. They look at situations where corporations took environmental or other regulatory short-cuts, which ended up in disaster, and ask whether anyone is thinking about sustainable approaches. They rightly point to the accounting gimmickry involved in several high-profile debacles and ask what it has to do with the creation of long-term wealth for human investors.
