>Shareholders couldn't care less if someone fucks up the house. Most corporate shares in the US are held by retirement and pension funds. Those funds are run by people who are paid to make sure that they can divest from a position relatively quickly and with minimal loss in value. Many of them diversify their holdings and are perfectly fine with someone screwing the company so long as it bumps the number at quarter's end. Jack Welch is an excellent example of this.
Activist investors and private equity are a counter to this. If it's really true that companies are ineptly run that all it takes is for someone who cares to turn it around, it should be easy to make a bunch of money by buying a company, exercising the tiniest of shareholder pressure over management, and then selling it after the company's turned around. Moreover, this strategy working would mean it's possible to get above average returns, which all institutional investors would be interested in. The board of Harvard isn't going to be very happy with their investment manager if Stanford is getting 1.5x returns by exercising good corporate governance. That's not to say corporate governance is prefect for all companies. The fact that activist investors exist at all suggests some companies at least are performing below average, but the claim that "Shareholders couldn't care less if someone fucks up the house" is delusional.
>For further evidence, see how the market reacted to the murder of United Healthcare's CEO yesterday. The stock barely moved when the news broke and is still up for the month as of about half-an-hour ago. That's not the behavior of a market that sees the CEO as a watchful guardian of assets and a risk-bearer of corporate decisions; it's the behavior of a market that sees everyone as utterly disposable.
counterpoint: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-08-13/new-starb...