Quote Originally Posted by grandm View Post
you are wrong about them giving money to the japan earthquake fund as a marketing technique. they can have a vote on behalf of the shareholders ( i'm just guessing would be mostly japanesse ) not all things are done for profit some things are done coz its the right to do. and your shares are worth zip if your house has just fallen down
your right.
You can have a board of directors meeting.
But even there, you cant just -give- money away. it has to benefit the company somehow.
In this case the company is located in japan and obviously couldn't function until Japan fixed certain things. so they could justify the donation as "helping to fix the house that just fell"

But the point is, they cant just give money away to be nice. There has to be a profit driven reason. Unless theres like a super majority and even there, you get a lot of complex legal complications.

Otherwise someone could buy 51% of a company, vote to give all the money to their wife or parents, and run the company bankrupt essentially stealing its money.

edit: but the fact ppl know they donated the money shows there -was- a marketing aspect to the decision.