When you get favors worth hundreds of millions of dollars you don’t have to be forced into much of anything and the stockholders aren’t likely to complain either.
I disagree. XOM’s stock performance has been statistically flat during one of the biggest government created stock bubbles in history. In fact for the most part of 2013 the stock price tumbled down while the exchanges were recording new highs. Although it has recovered it has not surged as most other stocks have.
Plenty of stockholders are certain to ask this CEO why he feels it’s important to the company to be threatening a governor over something called ‘Common Core’ which has nothing to do with the company’s objectives. And government favors or any money favors are never on the books of the company, they would be in company subsidiary slush funds that the BOD and senior execs have access to. Shareholders would never see them.