[themitigating]

They do work for shareholders but since shareholders aren't equally divided, i.e. one person or company may own a larger portion, and it's difficult to sue over this, executive can ignore the shareholders to an extent.

How would you prove a decision was wrong without hindseight? How would you prove an executive shouldn't make X amount of money?

Imagine I'm the CEO of Nike, I make $100 million a year. The company is doing amazing. Is that because of decisions I made, marketing, good product, word of mouth, things that happened before I was CEO. Prove that I shouldn't get that money.

[eru]

There's no need to prove anything: the shareholders can replace the CEO (via some indirection) at will.

They don't get the money back they already spent, of course.