>duty to their shareholders to use that asset to generate profit This is so widely said but almost never applicable. You could say this hurts Comcast's profita

>duty to their shareholders to use that asset to generate profit This is so widely said but almost never applicable. You could say this hurts Comcast's profitability because it damages rep. You could say Google is in flagrant disregard because they invest in new technology. Or Apple, because they donated money to charity. It's simple to see that this must be true: If you could predict which things were profit-generating, then no business would make bad decisions! I don't know what the legal criteria is, but I'm guessing it'd have to be some pretty severe misdeed (huge negligence?) or outright fraud before there's any legal implication. Before that, you'd imagine the board would step in.