I think this is the key to the confusion: seeing the shareholders as the true "owners" (and therefore controllers) of a corporation is, more and more, associated with socialist undertones: people recognize in phrases like "the shareholders are more important than the CEO" the sentiments of people who call for labor unions and co-ops, which want to assert not only employee shareholdership, but also shareholder primacy.
The current form of "capitalism" that exists in most Western countries, has a corporate structure that's a bit like the Bureaucracy of ancient China: we have self-perpetuating Boards of Directors that—while being nominated by the voting shareholders—also control the opinions of the same shareholders. Where the ideal corporation would be a "representative democracy of the shareholders", the current structure is more akin to a "plutocracy of the directors."
This is the hidden war that is being fought using the proxy of "CEO pay": Board-of-Directors-plutocracy corporate-model-ists like cronyist CEOs that are in their own pocket, doing things that serve the board in particular at the expense of the shareholders generally. They're willing to pay high premiums for this—and, also, when the CEO "comes from" their stock, to throw money at them "just because" (hoping they'll get their own turn to be thrown money at later on.)
Meanwhile, the representative-democracy corporate-model-ists resent CEOs that have any sort of elevated position; they see a CEO as a necessary evil—a general and strategist to serve with skilled experience their civilian representative who does not have those skills. To them, the CEO isn't a buddy, but rather a risk to be managed—a sort of genie, who the board (as the trusted elect) must do its best to keep in its bottle, even as they demand wishes from them.
Each side of this confrontation calls the other "anti-capitalist." But, as I hope should be obvious, neither of these sides really represents "capitalism" per se. Instead, one values the sort of concentration of wealth and power that anarchocapitalism enables; while the other side values the power of the corporate charter in an almost patriotic way.
No, there is no "confusion", share holders are in fact the owners of a publicly-traded company[1]. There is no need for quoting the word owners either.
The phrase "the shareholders are more important than the CEO" was not used by either myself or the OP. The discussion was also not about organized labor. Why you have chosen to invent a quote and introduce the topic of organized labor is just bizarre.
There is nothing at all socialist about equities as an asset class.
The rights of minority shareholders in public companies, like you and me, needs to be protected/regulated by law. If someone wants to pay their CEO $1B an hour they can take their company private. Otherwise what happens is that the average shareholders gets screwed (like I was for example when I held GM shares as it went bankrupt).
Influence and ownership are somewhat orthogonal concepts in the context of a corporation.
People like you and me are protected. Both CEOs and the Board of Directors have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders - all shareholders. And breach of fiduciary duties can incur both criminal and civil penalties:
https://www.nyccriminallawyer.com/fraud-charge/investment-fr...
When is the last time a CEO was on trial for share buybacks where clearly he has conflict of interest with the shareholders due to the $$$'s he makes in compensation?
Or I scratch your back you'll scratch my back kind of arrangements in boards?
And what got us here, the outrageous CEO compensation and other benefits. When a CEO is paid x100 the President of the USA you know something isn't right. Since any given company may claim they have to pay more to be competitive the only way to stop that looting is to force them by law to control those salaries.
I agree that in theory we're in a good place but in practice I think we can still make progress... Fiduciary duty apparently is insufficient.
No, If buy the stock I have a contractual right to future profits. This is true whether I am a small individual investor or whether I personally know every member of the Board of Directors. The stock represents that claim. Influence is completely orthogonal to the legal contract that the stock represents.
There are other situations like the company taking on debt, issuing more shares, bankruptcy, acquiring other companies, share buybacks, dividends. If you don't have control there are ways for the company to "steal" your share of the profits.
They are - the law requires the board to act in the fiduciary interests of shareholders of public companies. If the board didn't act as such, then you would have legal standing and be within your rights to sue.
It's not so much that the law needs to do a better job protecting shareholders, and more that the legal system needs to make it easier/cheaper/more accessible for common people to assert their rights.
(Edit: GM today, which is basically the same company that went under and then got Government $$'s is now worth $50B dollars. I didn't lose that much money but what pisses me off is that the dice was clearly loaded here. 80% of GM shares are held by institutions and funds and they're laughing all the way to the bank ... well, they are the bank!).
A CEO's compensation is used to retain and motivate that talent to create value for the company. If investors feel dissatisfied with how much they paid for the level of value creation they received on a particular asset that is very much a capitalist sentiment. There is nothing even remotely anti-capitalist about that.
Those hundreds of millions of dollars in CEO pay have to come from somewhere and that somewhere is increasingly company stock. Company stock is an asset that belongs to the company and that company is owned by shareholders. Money spent on "rock star CEOs" is money that could have otherwise been used to deliver more value to shareholders, an example would be returning money to shareholders in the form of dividends.