Tag: New tax bill

When theories collide: what happens when the shareholder preeminence theory meets the stakeholder theory?

Laurence Fink, the Chair and CEO of BlackRock, has issued his annual letter to public companies, entitled A Sense of Purpose.  As in prior years, Fink advocates enhanced shareholder engagement and a focus on long-term strategy development. (See this PubCo post and this PubCo post.) What’s new this year is that he is also advocating that companies recognize their responsibilities to stakeholders beyond just shareholders—to employees, customers and communities.  Holy smokes, Milton Friedman, what happened to maximizing shareholder value as the only valid responsibility of corporations?  

Assessing impact of major tax law change, if enacted, on financial statements on a timely basis would present huge challenge

The potential passage of the new tax bill is giving some finance departments conniptions, according to Bloomberg BNA, and they’re hoping that the SEC will address the problem.  The SEC?  Yes.  While companies are happy to see the tax breaks, some companies, especially large multinational companies, are anxious about whether they will be able to accurately determine the impact of the tax changes on their financial statements in time to file their annual and quarterly reports with the SEC. The obvious concern is that, if the SEC doesn’t extend the filing deadline, companies could risk making material misstatements.