Apple Open Secrets. . . SHHHHH Don't tell any one! Ping!
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Here is what a very astute poster said in the comments section of the source article:
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KenG
There is no dilemma, only a misunderstanding of laws, perpetuated by apostles of St. Milton. There is no law that says management’s top priority is to enrich shareholders. Their job is to run the company in a responsible and sustainable manner so that it can indefinitely generate profits for them (I guess even if those profits are never distributed). Sometimes this means spending money or foregoing revenue for PR or marketing purposes. Other times it means spending money or foregoing revenue to help ensure you still have lots of customers. The decisions management makes on how to market their products, how to design them, and how to build them, are not for shareholders to approve or disapprove. It’s management’s decision, so if they feel environmental issues will threaten their future revenues, it’s their call to do whatever makes sense to minimize those issues.
When Katrina devastated New Orleans, Wal-Mart sent truckloads of water to give away for free to residents with no water. Nobody accused them of violating their fiduciary duty. Intel spent tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars promoting USB and wi-fi standards, with no direct revenue, and nobody accused them of wasting money. These are marketing decisions that don’t have to get approved by misinformed shareholders, no matter what economic bible they quote.
And as Cook correctly stated, if you don’t agree with how the company is being run, you should get out of the stock. Owning shares of stock in a publicly traded company does not give you any say over management decisions - at best you get to vote for a board of directors, and they get to hire and fire top executives. Given how little influence average stockholders have over corporate boards, they would be better served by selling their shares when they don’t agree with management.
Those green apples...
Apple’s Chinese Suppliers in Trouble for Environmental Pollution
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/04/04/opinion/04opchart.html?_r=0
Therefore, when Cook is asked by some activist why he’s wasting money on greenery and not running the company purely for profit Cook cannot tell him the truth. That the company is being run for profit as it only does that amount of greenery that improves the profit margin and it most certainly doesn’t do anything that actually costs. For that would be to defeat the objective of doing the little that is being done.
BTW I just finished an investor meeting with 14 UK investors from various banks/hedge funds and /PE firms in England and Scotland. All 14 carried Apple devices (13 iPads and 1 Mac Book Air).