Lynn Stout is a Distinguished Professor of Corporate and Business Law at Cornell Law School and an internationally recognized expert in the fields of corporate governance, securities regulation, financial derivatives, law and economics, and moral behavior. She is the author of numerous articles and books on these topics and lectures widely. Her most recent book is The Shareholder Value Myth: How Putting Shareholders First Harms Investors, Corporations and the Public (Berrerr Koehler 2012), which was named 2012 Governance Book of the Year. Professor Stout serves on the Board of Governors of the CFA Institute, on the Financial Research Advisory Committee to the U.S. Treasury, as a member of the Board of Advisors for the Aspen Institute’s Business & Society Program, as Executive Advisor to the Brookings Institution Project on Corporate Purpose, and as a Research Fellow for the Gruter Institute for Law and Behavioral Research. She holds a B.A. summa cum laude and a Masters in Public Affairs from Princeton University and a J.D. from the Yale Law School.
Bank executives frequently proclaim that Wall Street is vital to the nation’s economy and performs socially valuable services by raising capital, providing liquidity to investors, and ensuring that securities are priced accurately so that money flows to where it will be most productive. There’s just one problem: the Wall Street mantra isn’t true.
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