See my reply to bogomipz above. I think the law could do more. Fiduciary duty is hard to prove but we do have fairly common practices that fairly clearly have negative influence on shareholders. I think the law should regulate those explicitly. Back to my GM example, there was some sort of class action lawsuit I signed on to, I believe all the money went to the lawyers. The bankruptcy laws are biased against the "small" shareholders. The large shareholders typically negotiate some terms that aren't available to the "little guys". Usually because they are also bond holders or hold some convertible instruments or preferred shares. A corporation like GM can effectively erase the small shareholders, start over, while pouring millions (of government money) into the pockets of the large shareholders. That shouldn't be legal.

(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!).