[40yearoldman]

Eh. Part of apples brand is “doing the right thing” and “being the good guy”. I would wager Apple’s brand would be hurt more by not being a green company. ROI is more complicated than simple fist level cost. Going green and doubling down on recycling has generated a much larger ROI than doing nothing.

Further more, Tim is bound by law to do what is best for the shareholders. Simply put, if Tim favored environmental concerns over profit he would be removed.

[j_maffe]

This is a complete falsehood. https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-co...

[wredue]

In your haste to defend the idiocy of shareholder causing constant enshittification, you accidentally forgot to read the comment you’re replying to.

Businesses are legally bound to act in the best interest of their shareholders. This is quite an open ended precedent.

[techdragon]

It’s a private company… to whatever theoretical extent he’s beholden to the majority of the shareholders with potential board of directors and shareholder meeting shenanigans … that majority of shareholders is himself… and I’m pretty sure he’s ok with his own decisions…

[Pannoniae]

"Further more, Tim is bound by law to do what is best for the shareholders."

This stupid meme needs to die already. There is no such obligation, he only has a fiduciary duty to not trash the company and spend the earnings on cocaine. "companies are legally forced to maximise profit" has never been true and this piece of misinformation has been going around for ages now.

[pdpi]

> There is no such obligation

And, insofar as such an obligation to “maximise shareholder value” might exist, that obligation doesn’t necessarily translate into “maximise profit”.

The shareholders of a theatre company might care more about breaking even while getting an interesting assortment of plays produced with a great cast than they do about making a bunch of money out of the venture, so an executive who makes a bunch of money by running productions of uninspired cash grab shows won’t actually be maximising value. Likewise, I’m sure that Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds care more about Wrexham AFC’s managers getting good athletic results than they do about making a bunch of money.

[sambeau]

There's still argument about this. The oft mentioned Dodge v. Ford Motor Company 1919 covers much the argument for and against. But it's clearly not straightforward.

My (IANAL) reading of it is that maximising shareholder value is probably the law, but it's practically unenforcible. Being practically unenforcible doesn't stop CEOs and boards from using it as a guiding principle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.

[re-thc]

> "companies are legally forced to maximise profit" has never been true

It's more like too hard to be proven in any way. Unless you live in an simulator it's really hard to say which set of decisions is better than another. People often say it is obvious or in hindsight but fact is there are no such hard proofs.

[vel0city]

Even then, if the shareholders approve of trashing the company with ice cream parties (had to get rid of the illegality of cocaine for this point) there's nothing inherently wrong or illegal with that.

As long as the executives are behaving generally how the shareholders want, it's not a problem.

[HardlyCognizant]

They are liable and there is precedent, as I understand it.

eBay v Newmark

https://h2o.law.harvard.edu/cases/3472

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/basr.12108

[ToucanLoucan]

Cook isn't bound by that true enough, because he remains the majority stakeholder, but that is increasingly not the case as it becomes more and more regular that companies bring in new CEOs from entirely different companies if not entirely different industries, who do not own that much stake. In those cases, the board and shareholders can and do exert a lot of influence, up to and including firing them if they do not do their jobs correctly, which to shareholders is invariably some form of "make line go up."

And that's just civil influence, there are legal mechanisms indeed in place if a CEO "trashes a company" and what that means is different depending on the company.