You under-appreciate how much control a united, semi-competent C-suite can have over a business where shares are largely held by passive institutional investors.  As long as the executives don&#x27;t run it into the ground they can do pretty much whatever they want.  Stock based compensation over a long (5-10 years) time horizon seems to be the best way to align incentives, but is under-utilized.  I wouldn&#x27;t have believed this until I experienced it first hand.