Dutch Finance Minister Wouter Bos today hit out at shareholders for doing ‘virtually nothing’ to prevent the current financial crisis.
Speaking to the International Corporate Governance conference in Amsterdam, Bos used the platform as an opportunity to make a forthright attack on the role of shareholders in the current financial crisis: “The financial crisis is more than one-and-a-half years old. Have the boards been steered in the right direction by their shareholders in that period; away from taking irresponsible risks? Or is that task being left to the government?”.
Shareholders were not immune though as banks’ supervisory boards also came in for criticism for not doing enough to intervene.