Shareholder Primacy in Benefit Corporations
Document Type
Book Chapter
Publication Date
2021
Abstract
From the Publisher
Chapter 17
The goal of the business corporation traditionally has been understood to be the maximization of shareholder wealth. Growing demand for social enterprise has led to the creation of various new forms of business organization, including the benefit corporation, which has the goal of creating both shareholder wealth and other public benefits. Although benefit corporations were developed to overcome the shareholder wealth maximization norm, it is not fair to say that they also overcome shareholder primacy. Properly understood, benefit corporations are shareholder-centric: they exist to allow shareholders to pursue altruistic goals rather than to require them to do so. This essay demonstrates this from the history and structure of the Model Benefit Corporation Act and argues that benefit corporation legislation ought to remain essentially enabling rather than mandatory in nature.
Recommended Citation
Velasco, Julian, "Shareholder Primacy in Benefit Corporations" (2021). Book Chapters. 13.
https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/book_chapters/13
Publication Information
in Fiduciary Obligations in Business 318 (Arthur B. Laby & Jacob Hale Russell eds., 2021).
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