Michael Meacher MP

The joint stock company, the foundation unit of modern capitalism, is dead.   But corporate managerial  capitalism is alive and kicking.   Whatever the constitutional theory that shareholders are in ultimate control, this myth is daily confounded by repeated evidence of management takeover from the inside.   Shareholdings have become so remote and so fragmented, and the tentacles of the leviathan they purport to oversee so dissipated, that effective power has now long since settled firmly on the top management.   But the extremes to which this is now being taken are starkly illustrated by the most recent goings-on at the Glencore-Xstrata tie-up.   The managements of the two giant companies have now fixed it so that they personally get £240m payouts, and further more they’ve fixed it so that the merger can’t go ahead unless these colossal pay hefts are accepted.   Game, set and match to the corporate fixers on their internal palace coup. (more…)