Can corporations' relentless focus on maximising shareholder wealth actually harm investors? UNSW's Professor Justin O'Brien talks to UCLA's Professor Lynn Stout about her ideas which challenge traditional views on corporate law and the shareholder.

Lynn Stout, the Paul Hastings Distinguished Professor of Corporate and Securities Law at UCLA, has been described as "the closest thing to a rockstar in corporate governance". Professor Stout advocates the end of shareholder primacy where public corporations belong to their shareholders and firms exist for one purpose only - to maximise shareholder wealth.  However, modern corporate practice needn't be this way. Professor Stout argues that shareholder value thinking actually harms investors, over time and as a class.

Professor Justin O'Brien is the Director of UNSW's Centre for Law, Markets and Regulation.

This is the second seminar in the series "In Who or What do We Trust".

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