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Comment by ashwinaj | Hacker News Reader

Investors are the millions of individual share holders, not just the bunch of wall street hedge funds and holding companies.

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If you're advocating that the hedge fund managers and pension funds accept a smaller return on investment in order to save Yahoo! engineers from layoffs -- that's a breach of fiduciary duty and against the law.

No. It is not against the law. I think it is only unlawful in the case where the company is actively up for sale.

Fiduciary duty applies to all agents acting on the behalf of principals, all the time. If an agent were to honestly believe that it was in the best interests of shareholders (financially) to keep Yahoo! jobs, it would be fine for him to vote that way. If an agent were to believe that layoffs were best for shareholder value, but voted otherwise in order to fulfill another objective, that's absolutely a breach of fiduciary duty, which is a legal duty.

> If an agent were to honestly believe

"Honest" or it's derivatives is the last word I would use in a sentence which includes Wall Street. Haven't Wall Street proven time and again that they are only interested in short term gains rather than a long term vision? I would be skeptical about any advice/opinion from a Wall Street firm.

Incorrect. It is actually against the law.

No it isn't. It's called value investing.

Fiduciary duty is in fact a legal duty, and it requires that agents act solely in the best interests of their principals. I have no idea what value investing has to do with this concept.

Sure, but what the parent comment suggested isn't a breach of fiduciary duty.

Sure it is.

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