Shareholder Value

The purpose of the corporation:
Shareholder-value maximization?
Finance Working Paper N°. 95/2005
Revised version: February 2006

Petra Joerg
Institut für Finanzmanagement, Universität Bern

Claudio Loderer
Institut für Finanzmanagement, Universität Bern

Lukas Roth
The Pennsylvania State University

Urs Waelchli
Institut für Finanzmanagement, Universität Bern

© Petra Joerg, Claudio Loderer, Lukas Roth and Urs
Waelchli 2006. All rights reserved. Short sections of text, not to exceed two paragraphs, may be quoted without explicit permission provided that full credit, including © notice, is given to the source.
This paper can be downloaded without charge from: http://ssrn.com/abstract=690044 www.ecgi.org/wp

ECGI Working Paper Series in Finance

The purpose of the corporation:
Shareholder-value maximization?
Working Paper N°. 95/2005
First version : August 2005
This version : February 2006

Petra Joerg
Claudio Loderer
Lukas Roth
Urs Waelchli

We wish to thank Nancy Macmillan for the great editorial help. We received many valuable comments from Max Bazerman, Lucian Bebchuk, Sabine Boeckem, Ingolf Dittmann, Espen
Eckbo, Christoph Hinkelmann, Andrew Inkpen, Mike Jensen, David Kelsey, Diego Liechti,
John McConnell, Frank Milne, Bob Monks, Ted Moorman, Urs Peyer, Caspar Rose, Carolina
Salva, Steve Sharpe, Meir Statman, Mich Tvede, Jim Walsh, Dariusz Wojcik, Yin-Hua Yeh, and participants at the 2005 European Financial Management Symposium on European Corporate
Governance. We are grateful to Regula Baertschi, Simon Fuhrer, Corina Steiner, and Manuela
Strasser for research assistance.
© Petra Joerg, Claudio Loderer, Lukas Roth and Urs Waelchli 2006. All rights reserved. Short sections of text, not to exceed two paragraphs, may be quoted without explicit permission provided that full credit, including © notice, is given to the source.

Abstract
Allegedly, there is widespread factual and normative consensus that firms

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