From angry shareholders to concerned chief executives, almost everyone knows at a gut level that the present political system is not working. This book finds the root cause to be poor corporate governance. In the prequel to this book, The Emperor's Nightingale, Robert A. G. Monks, one of the world's foremost shareholder activists, had warned corporations against putting short-profit ahead of long-term value for all stakeholders. Few listened - and the result was system-wide trauma that only bold solutions can heal. In The Emperor's Nightmare, his latest book, Monks reveals what can happen when corporate leadership abandons the common good to court and conquer a powerful elite. This insightful, honest, and direct portrayal of corporate governance and the surrounding political system will be of immense value to those interested in corporate governance - particularly shareholder and stakeholder advocates, and the true corporate leaders who serve them. In the end, better corporate governance means better democracy. This book shows the way.

Shareholder control over large corporations is worryingly weak and the unrestrained hunt for profits is taking a toll on the environment and society. In "Corpocracy, " corporate lawyer, venture capitalist, and shareholder activist Robert Monks reveals how corporations abuse their power and what we the people must do to rein them in. In a clear and careful analysis, Monks outlines a plan for reconciling the competing interests of corporations and society through thoughtful shareholder activism.

Democratic capitalism-the source of America's vast wealth, the foundation of our entire economic system-is threatened as never before, not from without but from within. Shareholders today no longer own, except in the narrowest legal sense, the corporations they have invested in. Emboldened by the Supreme Court and enabled by a compliant Congress and compromised regulators, America's CEOs have staged a corporate coup d'etat. They, not the titular owners of the businesses, decide where and how company resources will be deployed, what laws will be evaded in the pursuit of short-term gain, what offshore havens profits will be stashed in to avoid taxation, and critically, how lavishly the CEOs themselves will be compensated. Far too much of American business is being run for the personal enrichment and glorification of its manager-kings. This book shows how that happened and unveils, for the first time, a new study showing that corporations "un-owned" by their shareholders-corporate "drones"-are far worse corporate citizens and have significantly lower average shareholder returns than firms in which owners still exercise authority over management. Manager-kings, it turns out, are bad both for society and for business itself.