This year’s second installment of the Ruby R. Vale Distinguished Speaker Series was held on February 18, 2016 and featured Frederick H. Alexander. Mr. Alexander is the Head of Legal Policy at B Lab and Counsel to Morris, Nichols, Arsht & Tunnell LLP. His lecture, “Adding Ethics to the Fiduciary Relationship,” discussed the importance of developing rules throughout the governance system that allow corporations to act in a responsible and ethical manner.

It is well established that fiduciaries manage the corporation and act on its behalf for the sole benefit of its investors. To remedy the potential agency problem that may stem from this fiduciary relationship, fiduciary duties were created to mitigate the risk of misappropriation of corporate assets. As Mr. Alexander described it, however, fiduciary duties protect only stockholder interests, while ignoring the interests of all other stakeholders in the governance system, such as employees, customers, and the community. Further, Delaware jurisprudence reinforces this notion, especially by imposing a Revlon duty on directors to perform their fiduciary duties in the service of maximizing the corporation’s sale price. Sale price thus remains the most widely accepted measurement of a corporation’s success.

This creates a “shareholder primacy” paradigm where directors’ only responsibility is to increase profits for the stockholders’ benefit. As a result, any corporate action that benefits employees, customers, or the community must first benefit stockholders to be a valid use of the corporation’s assets. The shareholder primacy paradigm creates several problems, not only for society, but also for investors. First, shareholder primacy restricts management’s ability to pursue a variety of commitments on behalf of the corporation. It is evident that any commitment entered into by the corporation will be contingent upon creating value for shareholders. This creates a trust problem within a corporation, either between the employer and its employees or between the current stockholders and future stockholders. Second, primacy causes negative externalities to be passed from one company to another, which affects universal investors’ diversified interests in the general market. These two problems unite to form the overall problem with shareholder primacy: management’s goal is to obtain as much value as possible, but that is not always the best way to measure a corporation’s worth. Instead, Mr. Alexander argued that a corporation should be measured by its shared real value created when a corporation takes on certain commitments, thereby creating trusting relationships with stakeholders other than just stockholders.

Traditionally, the Delaware General Corporation Law (“DGCL”) mandated that shareholder-elected directors manage the company carefully and loyally pursuant to their fiduciary duties and for the sole purpose of creating shareholder value. However, the DGCL now provides an option for corporations to elect to be a benefit corporation. In addition to creating value for its shareholders, a benefit corporation may also consider the interests of all stakeholders. Under DGCL § 362, a Delaware benefit corporation must operate in a “responsible and sustainable manner.” A “public benefit” is a “positive effect (or reduction of negative effects) on one or more categories of persons, entities, communities or interests (other than stockholders in their capacities as stockholders) including, but not limited to, an artistic, charitable, cultural, economic, educational, environmental, literary, medical, religious, scientific or technological nature.” Today, thirty-two states have adopted provisions allowing for the option to become a benefit corporation, thus creating a new path for investment channels to follow.

In conclusion, Mr. Alexander emphasized that there is more to be done to encourage corporations to act in a socially responsible way. Because becoming a benefit corporation is still optional, corporations should adopt a set of fiduciary laws that recognize the interests of all stakeholder values and not just stockholder interests. In addition, investors should cease seeking short-term gains and instead invest private capital in avenues that result in positive social gains that benefit all stakeholders. Overall, Mr. Alexander urged that corporations should “stop competing to take and start competing to make.”