Comment by kasey_junk

It is not broadly believed in corporate governance circles that there is a legal requirement to maximize shareholder value. Nor will you find court judgements that require it.

If anything Milton Friedman is more responsible for this idea that shareholder maximizing is the corporate goal. That is an efficient market argument though not a legal one and he framed it long after the dodge suit. He needed to frame that argument because so many firms were _not_ doing that.

But just because a Chicago school economist says something about governance doesn’t mean it’s broadly applicable in the same way an Austrian economists opinions about inflation aren’t iron rules about monetary policy.