The Economist

Once upon a time, one could rely on the Economist. Its content could have been viewed as true thought leadership (I've been thinking about that today: see here.)

But these days its comment on corporate governance often just makes me sigh. Take this. 

First, the picky points.

1. Arthur Andersen was not a company, didn't have shareholders so couldn't practice shareholder-value maximisation. As a professional services firm, it may have advised its clients to do so but that's a little different.

2. Colin Mayer has not yet, as far as I'm aware, been knighted, although he has written a very good book.

But what I would most take issue with is this statement in the penultimate paragraph of the article:

"..most companies are engaged in a constant process of negotiation between managers and investors over their strategy and time horizons."

Do investors have such close engagement with managers? Where's the evidence for this? The Cadbury Committee envisaged that the Code of Best Practice would improve corporate governance by stimulating such engagement between investors and boards  but even that hasn't worked as well as they might have hoped. 

I think this is sloppy journalism.