Fortune April/May 2021

honest accounting

WHEN I REACH professor Jill Atkins by Zoom in late March, she is still working from home in the mountains of Wales, some 160 miles from Sheffield University School of Management, where she holds a department chair. Behind her, on a narrow bookcase, are all five editions of the seminal textbook she coauthored, Corporate Governance and Accountability—the first of which grew out of her lecture notes in 2001 and the most recent of which was published in October. There, on that cramped bookshelf, is a timeline of sorts, revealing how the mandate of business accountability has changed over the past two decades. “The biggest difference,” says Atkins, “is that a corporation’s social responsibility, and indeed its ethics, are no longer considered a separate realm from traditional corporate governance functions.” As far…

margrethe vestager

THIS EDITED Q&A HAS BEEN CONDENSED FOR SPACE AND CLARITY. “Dependency is not necessarily a weakness. The strength of the EU is that member states depend on one another.” EUROPE VS. SILICON VALLEY In the past there has been a perception that you and the European Commission have been too strict in holding American companies in particular to account around issues of antitrust and privacy. Do you think the world’s attitude about the responsibility of tech giants is coming round to your way of thinking? VESTAGER: I think very much so. It’s a nuanced and complex debate that has taken hold over the last two to three years with academic reports, research, policy reports, think tanks, political parties. That is a reflection of the fact that the digital marketplace is unregulated compared to all…

want progress on diversity? link it to pay

Last June, as the nation convulsed with protests against racial inequality and the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and too many others, Nike was in the same predicament as much of corporate America—pledging to help rectify society’s mistreatment and exclusion of Black people, while simultaneously being called out for its own failings on that front. Even as the sports-gear maker promised to prioritize racial inclusion, some of its own workers took to social media to decry racism at the company, citing microaggressions, lesser advancement opportunities for Black employees, and instances of Black shoppers being profiled at Nike stores. Nike encouraged workers to keep speaking out, and CEO John Donahoe admitted in a staff memo that “our most important priority is to get our own house in order.” Nine months later,…

the true cost of a ‘free’ stock trade

DOUG ATKIN and Bernie Madoff were engaged in a screaming match as two senior officials looked on in wonder at the Washington, D.C., office of the SEC. On this day in 1991, Ponzi schemer Madoff was there to defend a new practice he had pioneered. It was called “payment for order flow,” known on Wall Street as PFOF. Atkin, CEO of trailblazing electronic trading platform Instinet, believed that PFOF worked in direct conflict with his mission of getting the best possible prices for folks buying stocks. “Payment for order flow isn’t right! It should be outlawed!” Atkin yelled. Madoff shot back that PFOF added lots of liquidity to the markets. “I should be able to do whatever I want to get business!” Madoff barked. Three decades later PFOF is having another turn…

the bible of business

“IT CHANGED MY LIFE,” Warren Buffett told Fortune recently of Benjamin Graham’s The Intelligent Investor. “If I hadn’t read the book, I’d probably still be delivering papers.” But even Buffett is surprised by the tome’s staying power: Over 70 years on, Graham’s book was No. 89 on Amazon’s 2020 bestseller list and frequently ranks No. 1 in the economics and finance categories. “If you look up any investing book that was written six months or a year ago, it’s usually No. 24,000 at best,” Buffett says. “Ben Graham wrote a book that nobody has been able to come even remotely close to.” “Anytime Buffett mentions it, we usually get a nice little [sales] bump,” says Harper Business publisher Hollis Heimbouch, who notes the book has sold millions of copies in 36 languages. It…

a check on big tech

SHANNON WAIT, a technician at a Google data center in South Carolina, never thought something as inconsequential as a water bottle could get her into trouble. But in January, she was suspended without pay for complaining on Facebook that Google wouldn’t replace her company-issued water bottle, which was missing its cap after it had loosened over time. The punishment came after she had also talked to managers about a delay in promised COVID-related hazard pay for herself and fellow contractors. But after posting about the water bottle, Wait was escorted from the data center floor to a conference call, during which she was accused of violating Google’s nondisclosure agreement. “I could do nothing but laugh, because there is nothing proprietary about a water bottle,” she says. After hearing about the incident,…