> A "corporate death penalty" doesn't really work, because shareholders can always sell. You don't want the guy responsible to profit, while some innocent schmu

> A "corporate death penalty" doesn't really work, because shareholders can always sell. You don't want the guy responsible to profit, while some innocent schmuck gets punished because he happened to be holding the bag when the music stopped. You need action against the shareholders who were owners at the time of the bad acts. You could always tailor this so the penalization only applies to private equity and throw in a lookback. That would encourage companies to go public (which, IMO, is a good thing) and would encourage private equity to be responsible. You could still kill a public company that violates the public trust, you just don't have to penalize shareholders in that case because they are likely to not have the same level of information/control as a private equity holder/owner would.