How is it not fair? Why should they bear no responsibility in the behavior of something they are funding? They should indeed lose money for being reckless in their investment.
The alternative is to let the rest of society, that has no stake in the company, bear the cost of their toxic activity. How is it more fair than making stockholders pay?
I do not think destroying the complete company as a deterrent will help. That will not deter executives which will still be making money hand over fist. It will however deter investors in investing in companies in general.
I think a better way to address this situation is by reimbursing affected customers (which has mostly happened AFAIKT), compensating wrongly fired employees, disciplining the responsible executive (by firing and clawing back their compensation, which has happened partly). Improved oversight (internal/external) and whistleblower procedures should also be instated.
If an individual commits one count of Social Security fraud they would pay a fine of $10,000 or about 20% of the median household income. [2] (This is an arbitrarily picked form of financial fraud)
If the bank had a proportional punishment they would pay 20% of their annual revenue for systemic fraud, which would be roughly $18 billion dollars.
[1] https://www.wellsfargo.com/about/investor-relations/investme... [2] https://www.reference.com/government-politics/penalties-comm...
edit: used quarterly instead of annual figure for calculation
I'm not convinced you can compare personal law and corporate law. The fact that it's a fixed fine in personal law, regardless of income/wealth doesn't seem fair. Also, if you want to extend the analogy maybe it would be more appropriate to take 20% of profits? 20% of revenue it much easier for Apple to stomach than Walmart, because of higher margins. But then what do you do with companies that don't make a profit...