People say that shareholders "own" a public company, but that ownership is much more limited than ownership in the normal sense. In reality shareholders have ve

People say that shareholders "own" a public company, but that ownership is much more limited than ownership in the normal sense. In reality shareholders have very little direct input on how the CEO gets paid. The best chance for shareholders to influence CEO incentives would be if an activist investor got involved and made it an issue, but that's fairly rare, and usually only happens in the most egregious cases.