Call Them Disorganized Crimes

Abstract

In the years following the boom–bust of the late 1990s and early 2000s, the composite picture of the public corporation in America painted by financial journalists and management scholars was one of broad distrust. That portrait arose from revelations of outright fraud, excessive managerial compensation, a tattered agency relationship between management and the shareholders, and considerable evidence of a conspiracy of silence among major capital market servicers who had ignored some of the more tawdry activities of their own clients. Many shareholders felt they had been deliberately misled because these supposed watchdogs had failed to provide a timely warning. At the least they had been badly misinformed.

“I’m going to make him an offer he can’t refuse.”¹